ATTENTION FELLOW SCIENCE TEACHERS… I have written this in regard to some usefull science links that i have found throughout the semester that use simulations, virtual realities and all sorts of mutlmedia and interactive forms of interesting educational stuff

you may already have seen many but there are a few that may be new… and are actually really really usefull

*** BBC Website:

• Human body and mind
  • The interactive body
  • The mind
• Pre-historic life
  • Caveman profiles
  • Games and quizzes page
• Animals
  • Conservation
• Space
  • Games and quizzes
  • Interactive solar system
  • About our origins

*** Royal Society of Chemistry

• Periodic table of data

*** Nobel Prize.org

• The heating plastics game (really recommend this one)
• Steel alloys game
• Nuclear weapons “Peace doves” game
• The ear pages game

*** Planet Science – Wired Science

• games
  • Including earth rock hunter, laser lab, neutrino
• Planet science for teachers
  • Really cool interactive on “the five kingdoms of life”
  • Teaching kids about “BAD SCIENCE”
  • The little book of experiments
  • Debating materials
  • Look into Global Science hot spots
    • Intersting worksheets including “can malaria be defeated by building bat towers”
    • and “John Haig the gruesome acid bath murderer”
  • Faces of modern science

*** 4 Learning – Interactive resources

*** NOVA – Science in the News

*** Science News

*** ABC science

*** Surfing Scientist (by ABC news)

• Science tricks
• LESSON PLANS
• Teacher demonstrations
• Conundrums

*** Active Science – GlaxoSmithKline (Really good site!)

• Body Builder
• Illustrated materials database
• And heaps of other stuff

*** Fantastic contraption

*** Physics Education Technology (PHET)

***Alternative strategies for science teaching and assessment (RECOMMENDED-heaps of stuff here)

• Heaps of web links including areas such as virtual field trips, problem based learning, web quests, mysteries, board games

***LIFE CHANGING SCIENCE (RECOMENDED… really cool)

• Interactive lab looking at four different subjects:
• The mobile Phone
• Virtual open heart surgery
• In Vitro fertilization
• Food preservation

Having never blogged before this subject i think it is safe to say that yes, i was a little lacking in the World of online forums and information sharing pathways. Having now blogged numerous times through the last few months i have most definetly learn’t alot. Im not saying that blogging is the answer to all teacher problems, however i do see in blogging a very unique, relevant and collaborative approach to student learning. It has actually been alot of fun finding articles and papers about which to summarise and analyse and then display in my own personal way. It has given me a space of my own, a unique entry point into my own thoughts and interests and has allowed me to converse with fellow peers in a non threatening and open environment.

Watch a short teacher tube clip HERE titled “Blogging teacher”

What is a blog? Click here for Wikipedia information

In “All the world’s a stage”, a teacher Ann Davis, who utilised blogging within her classroom stated that “Having an outside audience really made a difference to them. They couldn’t believe that someone else would care what they wrote.” In comparison to simply writing an essay or answering a question on paper, which then gets safely locked away under some old tetx books in your bedroom never again to see daylight, blogging allows students to display their writings in a format that is in some way “eternal” (for lack of a better word). There is a greater sense of achievement and purpose knowing that so many readers, possibly from across the globe, could be viewing your work for years to come.

In Educational Blogging, an educational Technologist Lane Dunlop wrote about one class at Cornell College: “Each day the students read a chunk of a book and post two paragraphs of their thoughts on the reading.” This is comparitive to the type of work we, as in this course, have been doing over the last few months. Maybe in some way, the work load has been a little crazy for us Digital Gen students, being post grads and all, with jobs and babies running around… however for school students the realm of regular blog posting could prove a very valuable tool. Lets face it, the first thing most teens do as soon as they get home is get on the net and chat to their friends or post some stuff on facebook or play some games on the computer. They are probably more likely to be willing to get on their class blog while doing all their other stuff than opening a textbook to fill out a “fill in the missing spaces” sheet. I suppose it all depends on how you utilise the blog activity… what it is exactly you ask of them. You definetly want to give them freedom to express themselves otherwise it really is nothing more than a “glorified research lesson” as Mr Matthew Kearney, in his blog, has stated on numerous occasions.

As a science teacher, i see many benefits of the blog or forum. Not only does it allow my students to interact with each other and myself outside the classroom but it gives myself, and my students, a great way to share webcontent and resources. In the world of science there are so many beneficial games, YouTube videos, simulations and imagery located all over the web that linking these in my blog for students to find and help themselves proves quite usefull.

Either way, until the next big thing, blogging seems to be it… the kids apparently like it and enjoy using it. For this reason alone it is a useful tool and i really think that utilised well it can be a great source to brighten up the stale old curriculum.

Anytime, Anywhere Leanring:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=xIKYVoci8JI

Now this topic touches my heart. I mean this is what i am talking about when we say using computers and other digital means as a source of learning… im not really talking about powerpoint presentations or 2D simulations of a cartoon tree… im talking about some serious gaming… some virtual realities… and programs that allow serious team effort and problem solving to come into play. After seeing this article i immediately thought of a game I was introduced to just last night… at first i thought to myself “what crap” but then after about 2 mins i was addicted and not only that… yes there is more… it is completely and totally relevant to numerous outcomes in the science curriculum… how whacky… the game is called “Goo Ball” and yes… it is very cool… but be warned it is addictive!

Click here to view my Goo ball and Newton word cloud

(created at www.wordle.com)

In his paper, Gee touches on three main points that proceed a vaulable educational game, these are; empowered learners, problem solving and understanding. One of the most profound principle’s, i found, on this list is that “Good learning requires that learners feel like active agents not just passive recipients”. Unfortunetly, not even considering gaming, most classrooms fall short of this principle. All too often teachers, due to lack of time, skill or even care, revert to stuffing students full of wrote knowledge that students all to often, unfortunetly, feel is the norm. The great thing about a good game is that the player has control of what and how they learn and how quickly they want to move on. In my example of Goo Ball, the player has multiple different choices in which level they want next and each level involves a different strategy (like a different learning style). Games are interactive and so give players negative and positive feedbacks, enticing them and willing them to go on. In comparison to my friends the Goo Balls, i a few years back played the long awaited game for the series CSI… now there was a useless game… this is an example of a game with pretty good graphics and characters but which gave the player absolutely no ability to inquire and investigate and play as they wanted… it made it incredibely boring and didn’t rate very well all in all. Gee asks the wuestions “Do students actions and questions make a difference in the classroom curriculum? Are students helping to design their own learning?” People want to feel they are apart of something bigger then they are… and they want to be able to make decisions that will affect the way in which they engage with their environment… and this is what interavtive games allow for, well good interactive games anyway.

“Good games offer characters that the player can move intricately, effectively, and easily through the world… as well as intricate, effective, and easy manipulation of the world’s objects, objects which become tools for carrying out the player’s goals”. Lets take a game known as Zoo Tycoon, a very popular game similar to that of the Sims but using animals and having the ability to create environemnts for the animals, care for and manipulate your own world. Now i myself was in love with this game, trying to create the ultimate zoo, getting in as many guests as i could. And the reason i loved it, becuase in comparison to everything else in my life, inclusive of the stagnant school curriculum i had to learn, it allowed me to do things in a way in which I was the creator and the designer, in a way in which I choose how to do things and when to do things. In my head i was the ultimate Tycoon-neer. Okay, now i hear what your saying… this sounds like a really great way of creating a bunch of bratish school kids who only ever want to do things when it suits them! Trust me, i hear you… but at the same time if we need to teach them a certain portion of material, then why not use the fun way… the way in which (even though the students may not know at the time) they are learning while adventuring and creating.

Now coming back to my pals… the Goo Balls… we see the entry point for Gee’s other major area of research… problem solving. Now if Goo Ball’s teaches you one skill (although it teaches many) its that of problem solving. Trying to build those Goo Ball things into a ladder form which either clibs vertically or horizontally across a span, while calculating in the structure weight, the solidness of the base, the wind, the fact that the darn balls wont stop moving on the structure creating difficulties in balance and making the whole structure lean… anyway… i mean regardless of what anyone else thinks i will definetly be using this game as an introduction to numerous topics in physics to do with Gravity, Motion, Mass, Weight, Energy, Force and so forth. And the great thing about a game like Goo Ball is that all these forces and variables are acting on one another just like in a real life sutuation, students learn about dependent and independent vairables and how they can affect one another, this alikes to the “fish tank” as discussed by Gee. I would asks students when they had finished playing some of it… “what kind of things did you have to consider when building your structure?”, “what was helping to make it more difficult ot easy when building?”… not only allows students to problem solve on their own or in co-operatuve groups, but also gives them some form of visual and actual trialled base from which to form their answers and opinions on topics in physics, as in this case.

I have now realised that this blog is NOT suppose to be an essay, and althought i have so much more to see… i doubt many people would bother reading to this point… if you have… thank you, its very kind of you… so i would just like to say, that if nothing else, vrtual simulations and gaming realities are exciting and their definetly something for the future even if we are not ready for it now.

“Man is a gaming animal, he must always be trying to get the better in something or other”

-Charles Lambert

“Rip Van Winkle awakens in the 21st century after a hundred-year snooze and is, of course, utterly bewildered by what he sees. Men and women dash about, talking to small metal devices pinned to their ears. Young people sit at home on sofas, moving miniature athletes around on electronic screens. Older folk defy death and disability with metronomes in their chests and with hips made of metal and plastic. Airports, hospitals, shopping malls–every place Rip goes just baffles him. But when he finally walks into a schoolroom, the old man knows exactly where he is. “This is a school,” he declares. “We used to have these back in 1906. Only now the blackboards are green.””

Having had read numerous articles and papers along with other blogs regarding ICT and learning it is only natural to come across a paper that summises, and right fully so, that there is no actual evidence that computers in classrooms improve teaching and learning. So the question really is… are we making the right move in pushing mutlimedia and ICT in our classrooms or are we just being naive in thinking that computers will solve all of our teaching and learning woes? Is it really worth it? Are we subsidising real teaching and learning from past techniques to make way for some insiduos form of software? Or is this an earnest push to a new and brilliant pathway for learning? Are we being real or dellusional?

“In a poll taken early last year U.S. teachers ranked computer skills and media technology as more “essential” than the study of European history, biology, chemistry, and physics; than dealing with social problems such as drugs and family breakdown; than learning practical job skills; and than reading modern American writers such as Steinbeck and Hemingway or classic ones such as Plato and Shakespeare”. Even for myself, an individual who believes in the teaching, learning capabilities of computers thinks this statement goes a bit far. I can’t help but think when i read statistics such as this… why does everyone have to go so far? Why do people have to be so one sided… i think what we need is a great big hoard of fence sitters. I mean is is really neccessary to have to take out Shakespeare and disengage students from important social and personal issues in order to implement computers in a plausible way. Why can’t we do both? I mean its more about enhancing learning of such topics through the use of computers not one or the other.

“I know some who went to college, graduated, and then had to go back to technical school to get a job.” Well how about those students who go through school learn everything there is about atoms, roman medieval history and the lifecycle of the mosquito to find they have to go back to college to learn how to use the computer. At the present moment in time it is definetly true that as a society we have a great need to for trade skilled individuals, however this should not impact on giving students the ability to also be educated into a, and we have to admit this, increasingly digitized and ICT framed workplace.

Sherry Turkle, a professor of the sociology of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology states that “The possibilities of using this thing (computers) poorly so outweigh the chance of using it well, it makes people like us, who are fundamentally optimistic about computers, very reticent.” Unfortunate as it is to admit this is very true. Teachers must understand that just using a computer to use one is not what it is all about. Teachers also need to understand that students need to be made aware of the pitfalls of computers and the Internet and for this to happen teachers need to be aware themselves. This is the biggest problem.

Clifford Stoll, author, stated that “We loved them because we didn’t have to think for an hour, teachers loved them because they didn’t have to teach, and parents loved them because it showed their schools were high-tech. But no learning happened.” Is this really the way we see computers… if it is its pretty dismal. A large problem with the state of the “digital world” today is that we know how important computers and other digital media is we just dont have the proper capacities to utilise it within the classroom. We could say that what we are trying to teach is not in correlation with the way we are wanting to teach. As i have said before, here in NSW Australia, the science curriculum is way out of touch and needs a revamp asap if we want to bring it into the new century.

No matter what happens we shall just have to agree to disagree as i dont think society shall ever agree upon “what is important for us to know and learn”. I think we can all safely say that computers are not the be all and end all, there is so much more to education and we cant just simply discount traditional methods due to this “amazing” new power. In order to really utilise computers we need to develop teaching styles to suit both the development of ICT ability and learning of important subject matter together. Programs to support our curriculums and teach our students fundamentals of histroy and society through a new world medium.

In conlusion… are we disallusioned? No, i dont think so… i think we are striving for something new… something better and God knows we need it! It may take a little time to tweek, but at least we are doing something… it may not be perfect… but we are on our way.

HAVE YOUR SAY: DO YOU HATE GEN Y? click here

Wow…didn’t really know there was so many problems… but either away apparently “poor spelling and grammar and a failure to understand what constitutes appropriate corporate behaviour are the biggest issues”, with almost 70 per cent of surveyed employers reporting dissatisfaction with their Gen-Y employees’ performance in those areas. The question is “why would anyone hire a Gen-Y?” And as depressing as it sounds, it seems as though the only reason is that employers have no choice! “Chronic labour shortages across the Australian economy mean few businesses can afford not to hire anyone that might have a chance of doing a good job, let alone a whole generation”. Seriously speaking though…could this really be true?

Okay so seriously… lets think about what Gen Y does have…. aha TECHNOLOGY! They may be brats but the one thing we can be sure about is that the new generations definetly have the upper hand when it comes to technology. And if companies are lurching as hard as they seem to be into the new millennium and wanting for their place in the digital generation than they should be grateful for what they have… as in the article “older business owners are relying on their younger employees to help them keep up with the latest technology trends”.

Okay and so lets just say they are a bunch of demanding brats… “They think it’s their right to have what they want, they’re brash and naive and they can really be like spoilt kids who say ‘I want a pony now, I’ve got four ponies at home but I want another one and I want it now’. You don’t want that at work.” Well so what? Lets just say instead of brash… they are willing to go full steam ahead… instead of spoilt… they know what their goals are and they are willing to go for them… and instead of thinking they have the right to everything… they are well aware of themselves and those around them what they can achieve. Not only this but they work in a manner that wont kill them from a heart attack at 30. They know what the good life is and they want to enjoy themselves… they have realised that you only live once. Thank you to our parents who worked themselves to the bone for us… but now that we are here… lets all just enjoy ourselves. The new generation… and so this is what i say about the gen Y… they are go getters, they want the big house on the water and they want the big flat screen tv… and they want all this while they party like its 1999… so what!… its a new generation… get over it!

For some more into the Gen Y click on the following article:

“4 things managers must know about gen Y talents”

My initial attention to this blog came from the opening statement… Did you know that “This year’s crop of Year 12 students was born at the same time as the first web browser (Head, 2008)?” And no i didn’t know. Whats even more interesting is that i cannot even remember what it was like before the internet. I remember the first time i learn t how to use the internet, i couldn’t get my head around the idea of being connected to so much information and i randomly believed in my head that every thing i searched on it was contained inside the big box sitting next to the screen.

So now that i have admitted to that bit of information we can get to the rest of the issue. Skillen raises an interesting point, originally stated by a John Pegg (professor at the university of New England, 2007), “a profound gap between what people hope rolling out computers into schools will do, and what will more likely be achieved”.

This brings me back to one of my earlier blogs “Expensive boxes”. I noted here that ”simply dumping computers at schools will be of no great benefit if teachers are unwilling to use them and there’s no money to actually make them work”. Pegg like minded, continues in saying that “Just paying for computers to be installed in schools is the easy option … the hard work is the professional development of teachers and updating of assessment techniques”. This is an important issue not only in terms of teachers just going out into the workforce and learning the initial :”digital technique”. But ongoing development which is necessary in order to keep up with the major changes that consistently lead to newer and varied technologies. Especially as a science teacher it is absolutely necessary to re invigorate out sense of what is out there, what is available to us and how to best use it. This leads to another important, and again already brought up issue… it is fine to be able to use technology but WE MUST know how to use it as it is needed and not just for technologies sake. We hardly have enough time to teach our students what they “need” to know let alone “cuffufle” around wasting time setting things up when it will be of no benefit in giving students a deeper and better understanding of anything.

Do you realize if it weren’t for Edison we’d be watching TV by candlelight?

~Al Boliska

The following is written in regard to a blog Educating the digital generation by a Mr Paul Fuller from Perth’s Orange Grove school.

I came across this blog when searching through some interesting articles on use of technologies in the classroom. The “laptop for every student” may be a far cry away, however Orange Grove primary is really making the best effort to utilise computer technologies in the classroom, creating their own laptop leasing plan to make it more economical for parents to afford.

“Orange Grove Primary is a tiny public school in the foothills of Perth. With only 120 students, eight teaching staff and a miniscule budget, it might seem an unlikely place to find the beginnings of the ‘education revolution” I suppose in some way the smaller size of the school does make it easier to implement a plan such as they have, however it is interesting to see a school take matters into their own hands. I think too many schools and teachers are waiting around for something magical to come along to teach them and their students digital methods of teaching and learning. More initiative is needed to get the ball rolling.

These laptops give students their own library, their own printing press, their own movie studio and their own recording label. At a time when so many students feel disconnected at school, Orange Grove students are connecting with the world in authentic and powerful ways. Especially for students in remote communities such inititive allows them to not only stay connected at school but to the wider community even to a global extent.

The first article “Angry online divorcee kills virtual husband in cyber revenge” explores the recent news of a woman in Japan (where else?) who, after being divorced by her husband decided to kill her online husbands virtual persona! Now for the actual “crazy bit”… she is actually being jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data… and could even be imprisoned for years and fined a substantial amount of money.

The second article “Wife killed over cyber affair” explores the news of a man who (in the real world) stabbed his wife to death after finding out she had had a virtual relationship/affair.

I suppose the question becomes where is the line drawn between the real and the virtual? If people are so immersed in virtual worlds, and is such a big part of their lives than why wouldnt murder and affair be treated the same way as in the real world? But my God… this is all a little topsy turvy for me… i have enjoyed an occasional play on a virtual game here or there but i dont think i could blur the virtual game into my own real life to this extent. Please what do we all think? Do we agree that these people are insane? There must be other things happening in their lives to intimidate such actions?