Blog: 18-19
Morgan Kueter:
I am a first year science teacher at Fossil Ridge School. This blog is designed to archive my struggles and successes as I implement new technology into my classroom.
I am a first year science teacher at Fossil Ridge School. This blog is designed to archive my struggles and successes as I implement new technology into my classroom.
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The tech tool that I have choose to evaluate are gizmos by explore learning. Gizmos are various content specific simulations. These simulations will allow students to participate in labs, run population studies and so much more. There are several restrictions for the types of labs and studies we are able to complete in class due to time constraints, finances, materials available, class population size, as well as other variables. These gizmos allow students to assess an experimental situation, learn how to safely perform a lab experiment, collaborate with classmates, and analyze data in ways that are not available to us in a single class period. Gizmos are a great way to not just replace labs, but to give students access to studies and experiments that would not otherwise be available to them. In accordance with the SAMR model gizmos allow me to redefine the types of labs and the amount of data we can collect using gizmos than if the technology was not available. Students are no longer limited to the short-term experiments than we have the financial availability for, they can now think on a larger scale when they are questioning and developing experiments in class.
In the article What a Decade of Education Research Tells Us About Technology in the Hands of Underserves Students poses the conflict that students in under privileged communities do not have the same access to education as students in more affluent areas have. Gizmos help with this conflict because not all students need to have a desktop directly in front of them to participate in the gizmos. One of the features of gizmos is that they provide non-digital student participation forms, as well as teacher manuals, and lesson development. This provides flexibility to fit multiple classroom structures and computer availability. One of the greatest functions of gizmos is that they foster collaboration. Students can still be given the same lab leadership roles they would have in a traditional lab only in a virtual setting. Gizmos are also very easy to use and can be modified for any classroom management style or leadership style, which is explored more deeply in the article Leadership Styles and Technology: Leadership Competence Level of Educational Leaders. In this research article it concludes that technology can be implemented into any classroom, by any teacher no matter their teaching style. It found that no leadership style is superior when implementing technology into the classroom. In my classroom specifically, I aim to teach students how to explore, question things, hypothesize, and develop scientific methods for finding answers. These traits are essential for thinking like and becoming a scientist and also directly align with developing 21st century skills. Students use these simulations to understand abstract concepts that we talk about in science but are hard to observe in a classroom environment. These gizmos give the students the ability to perform an experiment to answer large scale questions that we are unable to visually see or explore in the classroom specifically. Overall, gizmos allow students to be a leader as they would in a traditionally lab, however they can answer questions and see things that we do not have the ability to in the traditional classroom. |
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