With the ultimate goal of connecting two classrooms across the Pacific to share and discuss science experiments, my fellow teacher next door and I embarked on a trial run with our own students. Our first step was to simulate the cross-Pacific relationship by having our own classrooms blog with each other about a common science experiment to determine various snail preferences. For our purposes, we limited preference options for each of our classes so that they would not have conducted the same experiments as their classmates next door. The hope was to simulate the kind of blog conversations that they might have with students from other schools. We planned to begin working with these other schools once we felt comfortable with some basic procedures about documenting and blogging.
The most exciting aspect of the ultimate phase of our project was for students to share experiments with each other as their audience rather than with the teacher or fellow classmates who likely conducted a similar, if not the same, experiment. Their questions could be answered and discussed by fellow 6th grade scientists across the world. They could describe their procedures for students who did not know them and who might seek to reproduce them in their own schools. 6th grade science had a potential for authenticity we had rarely seen in our own teaching and classrooms.
I will let the student blogs below to give you some details about what the experiments were about. But I can report that guiding an experiment while students took and uploaded photos to their blogs was entirely overwhelming. Even with a technology piece as theoretically simple as digital photography, the management of this on top of the management of a science experiment was enough work for at least two teachers. Science experiment issues (uncooperative animal specimen) were compounded by some technology troubleshooting issues, and we just about gave up.
Unfortunately, we were only a few days away from the end of the semester, and we lost momentum in the chaotic final days before the Winter break. But below are photos posted to the blogs of the team digital documenter(s). I believe only one group out of 6 was not represented by the photos posted to the blogs linked below. Better than I expected while in the chaos of the moment. Have a look and see a first pass at sharing a science experiment via a blog post.
http://blogs.isb.ac.th/miom/science/
http://blogs.isb.ac.th/briane/category/science/
http://blogs.isb.ac.th/celinae/2009/12/14/our-snail-experiment/
http://blogs.isb.ac.th/nicoleg/page/2/
http://blogs.isb.ac.th/teganm/2009/12/14/science/
http://blogs.isb.ac.th/nicolekrause/2009/12/14/science/
Thanks for giving it a try Martin (and Jono)! You guys rock for being so flexible and always willing to try something new! First of all, I love the pictures on the posts - there is just something about the visual (and the snails are pretty darn cute with their antennae pointing at the food they ultimately choose).
ReplyDeleteI wonder if it would have been easier with one person using the camera and uploading all of the pictures to the class flickr account and then having students choose their picture from there?
I'm also thinking that if they are more used to posting pictures on their blogs (after starting the year with projects like that) if it would be less stressful and more of a regular routine. I hope you give this one a try again next school year!