Today I set myself the challenge of only using ICT (and some practical equipment) to teach Work and Power.
I have known for a few weeks that I would have to do this.
I used http://issuu.com/ , http://padlet.com , Google Docs (a spreadsheet), http://www.socrative.com , https://bitly.com , http://www.pinterest.com , YouTube, and http://piktochart.com .
The first issue was remembering to bring the devices. This *shouldn't* be a problem in September when the students all have to bring iPads to lessons. Also being a science teacher will help as they will be able to charge them in my classroom, so a flat battery shouldn't be a problem either.
The second issue was finding the resources in the first place. I wrote a bit.ly link on the board, but this proved difficult to input correctly and took them to all sorts of websites other than the issuu magazine I had uploaded.
I can see resolutions to this, either by e-mailing (time consuming) links, creating QR codes to scan, or uploading to a department blog. The issue with using QR codes is that students will need to have a QR code reader, the issue with the third is that blogs are blocked at my school. I hope that the school will allow us to use blogs or edmodo with the students as this would be a great place to start with lessons.
We all got to my worksheet. However, for some reason issuu mangled the link to the googlespreadsheet, so back to bit.ly to provide me with a link to that. Then the students had to find their own mass and enter it into the spreadsheet; I always allow students to use my mass if they don't like it. The spreadsheet calculated their weight. Then we measured the height up the stairs and each timed ourselves going up the stairs. Then returned to the classroom, and inputed the data.
My next aim was to get the students to use the data and work out the equations linking mass, weight, work, distance, power and time. Their ideas when then put onto padlet. They really liked using padlet and seeing the collaborative work of their peers, but there were quite a few half finished sentences or just a name hanging on the wall, so practice at using this website would be useful. I was also frustrated because I wasn't able to upload an image that I wanted to include in the wall (with the answers). School firewall! I will have to approach this issue at school ready for next year.
After that they watched a video from my-gcsescience.com and one that I had made. It took me two hours to make 1minute 22 seconds of video and I could have spent a lot longer. It is very poor in relation to the videos I know others can make, and listening to my own voice echo around the classroom wasn't great.
Then we tried a secretive quiz. The students were cross with me as they got a few questions 'wrong' that the explanation said were 'right'. I think because I didn't indicate the right answer when making the quiz. I will have to be more careful with this in the future.
The students were really excited by the idea of collaborating on the same document, and they liked making notes from my YouTube video. They also appreciated the instant feedback that socrative quizzes provide.
I made an inforgraphic summarising the key ideas using piktochart and uploaded it to pinterest, which should help the students with the key ideas in their learning.
Next step is to think about what apps I want students to have on their iPads come September, and to work out how I will use the devices in more lesson. I think that I will be busy making videos and socrative quizzes during the next holidays!
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