Journal Article: Representations and Equations in an Interactive Simulation that Support Student Development in Balancing Chemical Equations

Carpenter, Y., Moore, E. B., & Perkins, K. K., Spring 2015 ConfChem: Interactive Visualizations for Chemistry Teaching and Learning, 2015

In this article, Carpenter, Moore, and Perkins are focusing on one specific PhET Simulation produced by Colorado University. The simulation is about balancing chemical equations. In the simulation, students see both symbolic and pictorial representations of atoms and molecules, and are then asked to manipulate the simulation to solve the problem. The authors discuss how the simulation can be used, along side class discussion and guided handouts, to teach novice chemistry students how to balance a chemical equation. Throughout the activity, students were able to explore the simulation, and were given feedback from the simulation when a problem was solved successfully or unsuccessfully.

From their discussion of the simulation and a classes’ interaction with the simulation, Carpenter, Moore, and Perkins draw a few conclusions/recommendations. The first conclusion is that online simulations can be a great way for students to draw connections between simple pictures and manipulatives to the content being learned. With the feedback given by the program, and some guidance from the instructors through class discussion/handouts, students can be successful at teaching themselves some material. The recommendation is to have these discussions, and well written worksheets to go with the simulation. The second conclusion that the authors come to is that these simulations can help address student misconceptions, and correct the use of certain vocabulary terms.

I do not currently use this particular PhET in my chemistry course, but definitely will in the future. I have used PhET simulations in the past, and think that they are very effective when introducing students to new content. Particularly content that can be difficult for students to visualize or make sense of on their own. I agree with the authors, too. With any of the PhET simulations, the guidance that is given to students is important. I think it would be tough to just tell a student to go play with the simulation and figure it out. Making these activities guided-inquiry activities is crucial to their effectiveness.

Read Article Here

Journal Article: Resolving the Formative Assessment Catch-22

Waters, J. K. (2012). RESOLVING THE FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT CATCH-22. (Cover story). T H E Journal, 39(7), 8-14.

The article Resolving the Formative Assessment Catch-22 is written by John K. Waters. In the article, Waters describes a Catch-22 that teachers are experiencing when it comes to incorporating formative assessment. For the sake of the article, formative assessment is described as the “process through which teachers evaluate how well their students are learning while they are teaching them”. This process is widely accepted by teachers to be a best practice in education. However, the problem lies in the logistics. Teachers are asked to formatively assess students’ learning during instruction to drive instruction, but then need to use instructional time to formatively assess. One might hope that as technology advances, the tools that are used for formative assessment will advance as well, and help resolve this issue. Unfortunately, it appears that most technology tools used for assessment are aimed more for summative assessment rather than formative assessment.

Waters continues to describe how tools for formative assessment are advancing, just slowly. The strategy that is focused on for this article is the use of various student response systems (SRS). The most well known examples given in the article are the use of i>clickers and Smart Technologies. Both of these, as well as the other examples mentioned in the article, can be incorporated into lessons by teachers as a way to get a quick set of data that can then drive instruction. Waters does not make a recommendation for any specific system over a different one. Rather, the recommendation made is more of a best practice with these technologies, and how formative assessment should work in any classroom.

From the article, it seems that many teachers agree that formative assessment is a vital component to any lesson. However, some teachers fall into the root of giving a formative assessment and moving on regardless of the results. Waters talks about how the main purpose of formative assessment is to correct a misunderstanding or gap in knowledge immediately. This is the biggest take-away from the article for me. It is a great start to have different formative assessment tools in your classroom. Some examples of SRSs that I have used include Kahoot and Quizalize. To take these assessments further, I need to be using the results, question by question, to explain correct and wrong answers.

Time Saving Tech-nique

I am happy to report that I knew most of the techniques that David Progue mentioned in his video.

The one that I was not aware of, and definitely will be using in the future, is pressing "b" or "w" during a presentation to either blackout or whiteout a slide. This is an awesome feature, and will definitely come in handy when I want my students to pay attention to what I am saying rather than focusing on what I have on the slide.

One time saving tool that I use all of the time is my trackpad. There are several multi-touch gestures on mac trackpads that are super useful. My favorite, and probably most utilized, is swiping up with 4 fingers. This separates all of your windows, and you can then easily click between them. I use this gesture to multi-task quite frequently! Unfortunately, I do not know if there is a similar gesture on PCs.

Future Ready Framework - Community Partnerships

Being a firm believer in the "it takes a village..." mentality, the Community Partnerships gear stood out to me as being the most important. This portion of the framework, focuses on how districts and students interact with the world outside of the school, both locally and globally.

At the local level, the framework discusses how through local partnerships, teachers can bring relevance to their curricula. This is something that I have witnessed and participated in at Oswego High School. In the Science Department alone, we have several courses where students get to interact with local experts via field trips, apprenticeships, and guest speakers. A few examples include our Forensics classes, which go to go to the local police station and learn more about crime investigation at the crime lab. The Medical Topics and Anatomy and Physiology classes were able to go to a local university to visit their cadaver lab. The Medical Topics students also spend a semester at the local hospital doing rotations in the different medical fields. In my own Chemistry courses, I have had guest speakers come in and talk about how my students could use Chemistry as a viable career option.

Community Partnerships also emphasizes global partnerships. I believe it is important for us, as teaches, to teach our students to be global citizens. Through technology we can connect with the world in a way that we were unable to several years ago. It is with these connections that we can make students global citizens, expand their horizons, and deepen their understandings of diversity. In some cases, we may even be able to take students abroad, and give them first hand experiences in different cultures.

Read the entire frame work here: The Future Ready Framework.

Journal Article: Promoting Formative Assessment in Online Teaching and Learning

Vonderwell, S., & Boboc, M. (2013). Promoting Formative Assessment in Online Teaching and Learning. Techtrends: Linking Research & Practice To Improve Learning, 57(4), 22-27. doi:10.1007/s11528-013-0673-x

The article Promoting Formative Assessment in Online Teaching and Learning was written by two professors, Vonderwell and Boboc, at Cleveland State University. This article focuses on formative assessment techniques that can be used in online courses. The introduction of the article emphasizes the importance of assessment as a tool to monitor student learning and teaching effectiveness, as well as a means to foster student engagement and improve student motivation and achievement. The authors also highlight the difference between “assessments of learning” and “assessments for learning”. Assessments of learning are typically used when assigning grades as an indication of student achievement. Assessments for learning serve the purpose of monitoring student progress as well as giving students feedback to help them close the gap in their knowledge. These assessments are used to inform the teaching and learning to help students improve. The remainder of the article offers various methods of formative assessment in an online course.

The authors provide eight different techniques that could be used in an online course to formatively assess students. These techniques include: online journaling, reflection papers, the minute paper, role play, hook questions, things to keep in mind, questions wall, and checking in with students. Online journaling can be used as an assessment tool to get students interacting and reflecting. The benefit to a reflection paper is that students have the opportunity to internalize what they have learned throughout the discussions. The minute paper is meant to be a fast formative assessment in which students answer questions like “what is the most important thing you learned today?” or “what question(s) do you still have in mind?”. Role Play can be used in an online discussion format where students are assigned roles such as facilitator or critical reflector and may be used to encourage students to interact with one another and monitor their peer’s progress. Hook questions and things to keep in mind could go hand in hand as a enter/exit slip in an online forum, especially after a reading to see what students thought was the main points or what they are interested in. A question wall may be a great way to get students to ask students to each other, or to the instructor, and can encourage collaboration amongst the entire class. Finally, checking in with students via email or in a small group chat is a way to individualize the student-teacher interactions and gage how a student is doing on a more individual basis.

As a high school science teacher, I do not teach my curriculum completely online. I also feel as though a lot of these formative assessment techniques are useful in a curriculum where students are doing a lot of readings and discussions. Although my current curriculum does emphasize in-class discussions, I do not have my students do many readings. However, if some of these strategies are tweaked, I think I could find them very useful in my classroom. The first idea that I found useful is the minute paper, which could be used at any point in a lesson. If I could find a web based platform such as a google forum or polleverywhere, I could have my students take one minute of class time to reflect on a topic that we have just covered. Their responses could be used to then fill any gaps in knowledge, or pinpoint the key targets that have been covered. This could be a very quick and beneficial formative assessment. Another technique I found useful in this article was the question wall. Again, I need to find a web-based platform where I could have students submit a question at any point (e.g. while working on homework, in class, etc…). I would then plan on working this question wall into my weekly plans. Perhaps, as a group, we start Friday’s class by looking at what questions came up during the week and answering them.