This week we are looking at Edutopia, Google Calendars and InTime Videos. All of these resources are useful in their own way.
Edutopia seems to be a fairly user friendly site that has TONs of quality videos and projects for students. You can check it out for yourself at http://www.edutopia.org/ I found two great physics articles / videos:
http://www.edutopia.org/motorcycle-physics is a great article on how to incorporate motorcycles into the discussion of physics. Kids always get a kick out of the fact that I ride a motorcycle to school and this article gives some ideas on how to incorporate that hook into a discussion about physics
http://www.edutopia.org/classroom-science-little-shop-physics has tons of ideas about how to have a physics outreach program. In previous years I have done this, but I have never been the lead in creating the presentations. This article has a lot of great ideas about what you can use to make these outreach presentations more engaging.
InTime Video (http://www.intime.uni.edu) has some videos created by users complete with lesson plans and activities. This seems to be an immensely powerful site that can help generate ideas for teachers about how to improve their teaching of various subject matter. For class I chose a video on Newton's 2nd Law complete with lesson plans and activities. You can view the page at http://www.intime.uni.edu/video/012iahs/0/ It mirrors what I do in class pretty closely, but the instructor has a different way of presenting the start of the lesson that made me sit up and take notice. His presentation uses a little humor to start the students talking. This seems to be a great hook for the start of the lesson.
What types of hooks do you use to get your students into the lesson? Personally, I try anything I feel would be attention grabbing as well as appropriate to the situation. Last year, when introducing a unit on genetics, heredity and mutation, I started the class with a rat on my shoulder saying, "Different animals have developed different characteristics to deal with the environments they live in. Some humans have developed different color skin or eyes in order to be able to deal with the amount of sunlight in their ancestral home. What types of adaptations have other animals developed?" Usually I just act really excited when the students start listing different characteristics of rats or other rodents. Usually it gets the conversation started. Unfortunately, the nice rat (Diamond) that I used to have died of a neurological problem and the rat we have now (Cheese) does not like me handling her (she loves my wife though). I tend to get bitten by her now. If I have that unit in the future, I might try using one of the Chinchillas that currently reside with me (or in the classroom).
ReplyDeleteThe lesson I looked at on the InTime site relied heavily on the use of technology. Since that seems to be the focus of this activity, I am curious how the use of technology in the Newton's 2nd Law activity you looked at compares to how you currently teach that material. Is there anything there that you have the ability to integrate in your classroom?
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