My IB Physics students have all submitted their experimental designs and received feedback. They have now handed in the data processing for their individual experiments which has become the proverbial “monkey on my back” in terms of getting the grading done. I have also recently given my IB Chemistry students a similar independent research project although with a theme of looking at rates of chemical reaction.
In my last post, I said I would reflect on the design portion of the project and in keeping with the nature of the COETAIL certification, I will limit the discussion to the context of the uses of technology in the classroom.
1. Use of Google, Wikipedia, etc to do background research
The intent of the Design criterion is to assess how students can plan out an experiment. This used to mean covering the theory in class and suggesting students do some extra reading in the textbook to find out background information related to the concept behind their intended experiment. Unfortunately, what it means today, for some students, is to use a search engine to find a procedure online and then adapt (sometimes minimally) to suit their plan (or becomes their plan). This is not great for assessment as the intent is that the experiment design of the student be evaluated, not the design of some author in an internet source. It is pretty easy to tell (although difficult to prove plagiarism), and unfortunately for the students (but somewhat deservingly), internet experiment protocols rarely satisfy the IB criteria so scores are generally low. Is the technology helping students in this case or hurting them?
2. The infallible awesomeness of Vernier sensors and the LabPro interface
I have mentioned in previous postings that students tend to be of the opinion that technology use and digital methods of making measurements are superior to “old fashioned” analog techniques. In some ways they are correct but student experiment designs are often handicapped by their “plug n play” mentality. What I mean by this is that there is definitely a culture of just plugging in a peripheral device and expecting it to do what you want. The first step for most students (although it is technology based also) is NOT to download the sensor instruction manual, read, and try to understand its operation, but to just plan to use it somehow because “use of technology” is still rewarded in schools (as opposed to “efficient, accurate and correct use of technology”). I of course encourage the latter and as a result have a portion of frustrated students who can’t get things to work. Their frustration is compounded when my first response to their asking for help is “have you read the manual?”. In a society where “plug n play” is a dominant marketing strategy (look at Apple), what to do when things don’t work (ie. problem solving skill, logical progressions of diagnostic tests etc) is in danger of extinction.
For the “unit” in question, I decided to look at the first independent research experiments conducted by my IB Physics students. The activity was very open ended. Students were allowed to choose any topic in physics, develop a related research question and then design and conduct an experiment.
Specifically, the standards my project addressed were:
Effective Learners E.L. Standard 1: Students efficiently gather, critically evaluate, and effectively use information.
Performance Indicators:
Students locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media.
Students evaluate and select information sources or tools based on appropriateness to the task.
Students process data.
E.L. Standard 2: Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate tools and resources.
Performance Indicators:
Students collect and analyze data to identify solutions and/or make informed decisions.
Students use multiple processes and diverse perspectives to explore alternative solutions.
Students reflect on inquiry-process to inform decisions on process and/or solution
Effective Communicators and Creators E.C.C. Standard 1: Students use appropriate media and environments to effectively communicate ideas, knowledge, and understanding to audiences ranging from local to global. Performance Indicators:
Students communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using media and format appropriate to both the task and the audience.
Students use technology and other information tools to organize and display knowledge and understanding in ways that others can view, access, and use.
E.C.C. Standard 2: Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using appropriate technology. Performance Indicators:
Students apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, processes or learning.
Students create original works as a means of personal or group expression.
The first crack at independent research can be daunting for an IB1 student so the project has been broken down into parts that run concurrently with regular classroom instruction. Students were initially given opportunity to find a topic, gather relevant information, and try to narrow down an investigative question. Although open-ended, it was interesting to note that most students chose topics that were related to the units we have already covered in class. Despite this, many struggled to relate the first principles, and fundamental concepts, to the practical when trying to connect the theory to the experiment. Most students were more concerned about getting the data, a fact that drove experimental design higher on the priority list but in many ways is putting the cart before the horse.
At the time of writing this reflection, students have submitted proposals, received feedback, and been given time to conduct experiments. They have recently submitted electronic versions of their experiment design to be evaluated using IBO criteria. My job is to get these submissions assessed and returned this week prior to the submission of part 2, the data collection and processing. My next post will reflect on their success in the Design portion.
Matthew Crawford’s original essay, published in the New Atlantis (can be viewed here) is a thought provoking, worthwhile read. The essay, published in 2006, evolved into the book shown, published in 2009.
“Matthew B. Crawford, who owns and operates a motorcycle repair shop in Richmond, Va., and serves as a fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, notes that all across the United States, high school shop classes teaching mechanical arts like welding, woodworking or carpentry are closing down, to free up funds for computer labs. There is a legion of experts denigrating manual trades like plumber, carpenter and electrician, warning that the United States labor force needs to be “upskilled” and retrained to face the challenges of a high-tech, global economy. Under this new ideology, everyone must attend college and prepare for life as a “symbolic analyst” or “knowledge worker,” ready to add value through mental rather than physical labor.” (New York Times Review, 2009)
“His book is about the the importance of using your hands to make and repair things. He compares the kind of life many people in developed countries lead — inside cubicles, working on things that are several levels removed from the physical world — to a life of skilled labor that requires ingenuity and experience, and provides the kinds of challenges that human beings were made to relish” (boingboing.net review, 2009).
How do you manage the use of technology peripherals with students? What are some things you’ve learned and hope to implement?
Technology peripherals in science class are everywhere. Physic teachers began with peripherals long before computers were common place in science classrooms using a number of sensors along with a Vernier interface and a TI 83 calculator. The sensor technology has progressed and now there are a large number of sensors including affordable photospectrometers and gas chromatographs.
We also use cameras to capture video data that can be analyzed. This is becoming more accessible to more students as high speed digital cameras are now very affordable.
Use of sensors and probes with interfaces is very easy to manage in the classroom. The instruments have specific purpose and data collection is usually in a limited time frame of the lab period so there is little time to get off task with laptops also having internet access.
My experience here at ISB is that the students by the time they reach Grade 11 have a good handle of the basic technology and how to treat the equipment with the appropriate respect. Managing their use has never been an issue and only rarely do I find myself reminding students of this.
What are ways you manage the use of laptops in your classroom and what additional best practice ways might you add?
Laptop management in my classroom is an area that I have not really put much thought into in any sense other than how to use 12 computers with more than 12 students in an effective manner that allows maximum exposure to technology. The most frequent use of laptops is by groups of students, to collect data, using sensors and probes, during lab experiments. As I do not have many opportunities to teach in a one to one environment, the tasks the students are asked to complete rarely give them opportunity to be distracted by other applications.
If one to one is a possibility, the range of activities will expand, giving students more opportunity to use spreadsheets for modeling applications, graphing software to analyze and plot data, and use of online research resources. This creates a less structured classroom activity (in the sense that the students are not under the gun to collect data) and would I think give them opportunity to diverge into other off task applications like Facebooking.
In this environment I am sure closer monitoring to ensure students are on task will be essential. I personally like standing at the back of the class where I can see the screens but they can’t see me monitoring them. Until that happens, the only management issues I have are with computers that do not boot up, log in, hold their charge, or are not shut down before returning to the cart.
I think the NETs for Teachers and Administrators are very relevant to educating students in today’s world but from a curricular perspective they are only a starting point for the development of appropriate pedagogy in our classrooms.
Relevant and timely, the NETs, if developed in our students, will prepare them for post secondary education and the demands of today’s workplace. The standards cover a wide gambit of skills, approaches and attitudes but to be effectively developed in students, teachers will need a underlying developmental framework that introduces, develops and reinforces these aspects in an age appropriate manner through a child’s schooling.
Only then can educators consistently develop students in a well articulated manner that follows good pedagogy.
How can teachers and schools ensure that their students are learning what they need when it comes to Technology and Information Literacy?
I think this is kind of an easy one to answer but maybe much more difficult to implement. As part of the team that orchestrated an MYP accreditation a number of years ago at a previous school, I was fortunate to be involved in the development of a skills continuum in science. More often than not, various science curriculums indicate desired skills as outcomes (or standards), often with general statements that are interpreted differently by educators. We articulated what is sometimes described as the “hidden” curriculum, by developing age appropriate descriptors for science skill development (towards the standards) from grade 6 to grade 10. These skills were grouped into areas, one of which included the Technology and Information Literacy type applications such as software usage.
The Learner Profile for ISB 9-12 students and how they relate to the TAIL standards is listed below:
Profile for Technology and Information Literate Students Grades 9–12 (Ages 14–18)
Any successful technology and information literate student will be an independent learner who reads, views, listens and collaborates for pleasure, personal growth and to make connections with oneself and the world.
The following experiences with technology and digital resources are examples of learning activities in which students might engage during Grades 9–12 (ages 14–18):
1. Design, develop, and test a digital learning game or resource to demonstrate knowledge and skills related to curriculum content. (2, 3, 4)
2. Create and publish an online art gallery with examples and commentary that demonstrate an understanding of curriculum content. (3, 4)
3. Select digital tools or resources to use for a real-world task and justify the selection based on their efficiency and effectiveness. (2)
4. Employ curriculum-specific simulations to practice critical-thinking processes. (2)
5. Identify a complex global issue, develop a systematic plan of investigation, and present innovative sustainable solutions. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
6. Analyze the capabilities and limitations of current and emerging technology resources and assess their potential to address personal, social, lifelong learning, and career needs. (2, 6)
7. Model legal and ethical behaviors when using information and technology by properly selecting, acquiring, and citing resources. (1, 6)
8. Create media-rich presentations for other students on the appropriate and ethical use of digital tools and resources. (3, 4, 6)
The numbers in parentheses after each item identify the standards most closely linked to the activity described. Each activity may relate to one indicator, to multiple indicators, or to the overall standards referenced.
The categories within the TAIL Standards are:
• Standards 1 & 2: Effective Learners
• Standards 3 & 4: Effective Communicators and Creators
• Standards 5 & 6: Effective Collaborators
This is a very good example of why I hate standards. Any educator worth their salt can take any lesson plan or activity and put the text in the boxes to match it up against a particular standard. I don’t believe this works and I see evidence for that in my Grade 11 students who have come up through the ISB rank and file but individually have different skill sets. This is through no fault of individual instructors but rather an issue of not having a clearly articulated continuum of what skills students need to acquire and at what grade level in order to progress towards the desired outcomes.
A great example would be selecting, acquiring and citing resources. What is the format for citing web pages at ISB? Is there a standard one? Are the expectations different at different grade levels? Should the expectations be consistent in different subject areas? I don’t know the answers to these questions so I come up with my own requirements for my classroom at my grade level. How is that “effective”?
I in no way want to limit teacher’s creativity in designing learning experiences but rather want to see a framework to better aid and provide more consistency to that design and planning process. When for example should students first be exposed to MS Excel (or any spreadsheet)? When do they learn about cells and formulae? When do they learn more advanced and possibly subject specific features? Is this a logical progression? Can it be documented?
I am pretty sure that the solution here is a framework with the accompanying curriculum mapping to ensure gaps are filled and repetition is minimal.
Whose job is it to teach the NETs and AASL standards to students?
This is an interesting question in the way that it is phrased. The answer to me is fairly obvious in the sense that any teacher who is integrating technology into instruction following principles laid out by various 21st century learning documents, should also be teaching the various facets of the NETs and AASL standards to students. This to me is a no-brainer, a fundamental principle, a given really, but what the question fails to address and the issue that is often overlooked is that NETs and AASL standards are exactly what they say they are “standards”. These documents are not benchmarks assigned to a particular grade level nor are they a syllabus that guide a pedagogical sequence.
This to me is the root of the matter. I am an outcomes (preferably measurable) kind of guy. In the course of science instruction, I like to see an underlying skills continuum that clearly lays out benchmarks for students in a given skill area at a particular grade level. It makes sense in a diploma program school that science skill benchmarks exist for example in grades 8 and 10 at minimum. What is clearly outlined for these and the prior or intermediary grade levels (my experience comes from MS and HS) is a well defined progression toward those benchmarks. I have never seen such a thing when it comes to technological competency and reaching the standards outlined by NETs and AASL.
As a teacher, I don’t think I should be figuring that out. What I am being encouraged to do is to integrate all manners of ICT to encourage collaboration, global audiences, enhanced communication, more efficient use of time, and professional looking products. My experience from discussions with other teachers is that this is happening all over the place but with no underlying structure. This is a problem. I offer some sort of solution in my next post.
Over the duration of this course we have looked at how technology has made media usage and production an integrated part of today’s classroom. Carefully chosen images and other media are powerful tools that can dramatically change exposure in the classroom to concepts in science.
For example, the Sydney aquarium is a great place to learn about physics. Optics actually and more specifically refraction which in my mind is much more interesting than reflection.
For our final project, Jonathan Eales and I decided to augment the IB Scientific Writing Guide with some short screencasts to help students learn and use some of the basic features of MS Word and MS Excel. The project was a simple concept. Make 4 – 5 short (like 2-3 min) videos that relate to the software and its application in collecting and processing data in a typical laboratory exercise. It sounded easy but in reality, there were some difficulties.
As with many media issues, there are problems with platform and format. This type of file cannot be read by this type of software. Editing software requires raw footage to have a specific extension. Software designed to be simple to use, is but the output it generates somehow magically multiplies file sizes exponentially. Jon and I separately and collaboratively dealt with many of the inconveniences and pondered the efficiency of the process.
The screen casts have been added to a current working version of the writing guide and can be found here.
I have mixed feelings about the nature of our choice of project. I wonder about whether the cost/benefit analysis comes out in the black. I wonder why we are seeing a need to teach students this stuff in Grade 11 when in my mind much of it should already be embedded in their modern day pencil case.
Question: How has the explosion of web based video changed the teaching and learning landscape?
I have a very basic response to this question with respect to the daily applications in high school science classrooms. Web based video provides an expansive, accessible, search-able data base of video resources that simply did not exist when I began teaching science 15 years ago. In the past, VHS video was used in science class to provide information, but more critically to give students exposure to concepts/experiments/phenomena that could not easily be reproduced or demonstrated in the laboratory.
As technology changed, video discs and then DVD’s emerged that allowed teachers to access the important relevant video clips in a timely (no rewind) fashion. You can still buy DVDs of chemistry demonstrations that show experiments no sane teacher would ever conduct in the classroom.
Now, it is more common just to search YouTube. Great quality video clips from TV shows, science programs, and student made video are easy to find, and because they are online, the student viewing experience can happen outside of the classroom as many times as they want. It is often rewarding and effective for learning when students themselves are given the opportunity to find relevant video to share with classmates through a forum such as a course WIKI. This assignment yielded some excellent results with my last IB physics class and their study of relativity – see IB Physics Dawghouse.
Here are a couple of examples.
This first video illustrates all of the principles of projectile motion. The physics behind this demonstration is fantastic and it allows for all kinds of teaching possibilities in the classroom from addressing misconceptions, to calculation of the gravitational constant, to determining the coefficient of friction for neoprene.
The second video that explicitly addresses the second law of thermodynamics. The applications include analyzing the mechanisms presented using Sankey diagrams and calculating energy transformations and efficiencies.
My IB Physics students have all submitted their experimental designs and received feedback. They have now handed in the data processing for their individual experiments which has become the proverbial “monkey on my back” in terms of getting the grading done. I have also recently given my IB Chemistry students a similar independent research project although with a theme of looking at rates of chemical reaction.
I have mentioned in previous postings that students tend to be of the opinion that technology use and digital methods of making measurements are superior to “old fashioned” analog techniques. In some ways they are correct but student experiment designs are often handicapped by their “plug n play” mentality. What I mean by this is that there is definitely a culture of just plugging in a peripheral device and expecting it to do what you want. The first step for most students (although it is technology based also) is NOT to download the sensor instruction manual, read, and try to understand its operation, but to just plan to use it somehow because “use of technology” is still rewarded in schools (as opposed to “efficient, accurate and correct use of technology”). I of course encourage the latter and as a result have a portion of frustrated students who can’t get things to work. Their frustration is compounded when my first response to their asking for help is “have you read the manual?”. In a society where “plug n play” is a dominant marketing strategy (look at Apple), what to do when things don’t work (ie. problem solving skill, logical progressions of diagnostic tests etc) is in danger of extinction.
The final assignment in the 
Matthew Crawford’s original essay, published in the New Atlantis (
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