The Globe Program

The Globe Program is a NASA-funded global environmental science research project.  Students from around the world collect data about the local atmosphere, climate & weather, soil conditions, water quality, land cover, etc.  Students collect this data according to rigid protocols and standardized equipment and, if their teacher is certified Globe teacher, they can submit their data to an online database that other students, and scientists for that matter, have free access to.
 
They also publish a curriculum that you can follow without any training and use in your classroom, but you will not be able to publish your data.  For many teachers this will not really be an issue.  They have some great activities and you should check them out, especially if you are teaching environmental or earth science.

Living in NYC presents special problems for students and teachers wishing to engage in the program.  Specifically the protocols for studying soil present tremendous difficulties - just finding soil can be a challenge! The parks department is obviously reluctant to allow much digging around and most of the city is covered with buildings, concrete, or asphalt.  I am working with a couple of other people at City College this summer to examine ways that we might implement the soil protocols in NYC. 
 
One of the concerns I have is the relevance issue.  Why is it important in NYC to monitor soil conditions?  Agriculture isn't a great factor, and about the only place where plants grow in abundance is the NYC Parks, which are practically off limits anyway for our purposes.  So we aren't concerned in general about soil quality for crops, the parks are off limits, and we aren't too worried about the topsoil drying up and blowing away - it's already covered anyway with non-living materials! That pretty much leaves monitoring soil for evidence of other environmental factors, such as pollution.
 
Of course, there's also the big picture angle, that students need to be aware of the world outside of their urban environs.  We can study soil locally and make connections to what is happening in areas where agriculture is important and what's happening in forested areas around the world.  What about connections with Regent's Living Environment?  I will probably spend a little time on the soil protocols/activities in looking at ecosystems, the interaction of biotic & abiotic factors, but I doubt that I will have time to do a lot of the activities, given the scope of the living environment curriculum.  On the other hand, I will also be teaching a 7th grade class which includes, in my district's curriculum, both ecology & geology, where the connections with a study of soil are more obvious. 

Summer Work

After swearing that I would not do any summer work this year and instead spend some time with my own children, I again got pulled into doing several school-related projects.

Today I finished the formal but introductory part of a program with Columbia University's GK-12 program, an NSF project that brings together many of the resources of Columbia University with math/science teachers in NYC public schools. Most importantly, perhaps, is the partnership between a Columbia grad student and teachers. In my particular case, I and a colleague from my school will be sharing a grad student from the computer science field. We are discussing ways of bringing his particular expertise into the classroom, thinking about information theory & technology generally and seeing how we might make connections with genetics/evolution, or even ecology. These are just abstract ideas at the moment, and I will discuss them more as we flesh them out and come up with specific activities or lessons.

Of course there's the more concrete benefit of using computer technology in the classroom for more specific content objectives. Part of our training this week involved the use of Vernier Probeware, which we will be able to use in our classrooms next year. Our graduate student (and a team of undergrads if necessary!) will be available to help set up the equipment and run it in our classes. A classic example of the uses of probeware is measuring the changes in CO2 & O2 levels with a plant in a closed container, comparing these levels in light & darkness, relating to photosynthesis & respiration.

Next week I start work on another project, which I will describe in a separate post, but also related to a GK-12 grant at another university. Then, at the end of the month/beginning of August, I will be involved in a summer institute with the NYC Department of Education - not exactly sure yet what that will entail...

Change of Heart?

I had always opposed teaching regents (high school level) science courses in grade 8 in most of our District Six middle schools (Washington Heights, Upper Manhattan, NYC). My reasoning was based on a few observations.

1. Most of our students are deficient in a number of basic science skills and habits of mind, partly from inadequate science instruction in elementary grades, partly from # 2 below.

2. Most of our students have not had any accelerated science instruction in any previous grades.

3. Combining 1 & 2, most of our students have not mastered basic middle school level science concepts & skills by the time they enter grade 8. This is a particular problem because, of course, the regents curriculum assumes that the student has certain requisite background knowledge from middle school science. As an example, in regents bio, students jump right into DNA structure & replication, protein synthesis, & so on. It is assumed that students have already mastered Mendelian genetics - dominant & recessive genes, Punnett squares, pedigree charts, etc. Of course we don't teach that topic until grade 8. So that's an additional topic for my students to deal with in taking regents next year.

4. Most of our middle schools do not have adequate facilities (science rooms with running water, space, lab tables, etc.), nor do they have adequate materials for teaching a rigorous regents class with required laboratory hours. To the extent that it is done well, it demands a lot from the teacher in terms of drumming up materials, labs, activities, etc.

Most schools are unwilling to provide the number of hours per week of science necessary to address the problems outlined above. To be more precise, I’ve been looking at the science programs in a number of high schools. Most of them program 7.5 periods per week for 10th graders to complete the Regents Living Environment course. I found one high school that actually offers a 10 period per week section for students who are struggling academically and at risk of failing the exam in a regular 7 period setting. I’ve seen regents offered here at some of our middle schools at 5, 6, or 7 periods per week. And that’s for 8th graders! Granted, these are usually higher functioning 8th graders, but still, most have not had the benefit of the full range of middle school topics before being thrust into a high school biology class.

So why am I teaching regents biology next year?

1. My school has scheduled 8 periods per week for the regents classes next year. That increases the odds of success.

2. I want to teach the kids I have this year (in grade 7) again next year. In spite of my reservations about looping, there’s something special about “graduating” (it’s a NY thing I suppose – 8th grade graduation isn’t something I am familiar with from NC) with a group of students that you’ve been with for a couple of years.

3. One way or another I plan on teaching regents living environment from now on – that means one way or another I will not be looping anymore. That probably means moving on to another school after next year, probably a high school, where I can settle down and become proficient at teaching biology.

4. I think I can do the job well and I’m willing to invest a considerable amount of time, energy, & effort to make it work – see #3 above.

So really, I haven’t had a change of heart per se. I still think that under current circumstances most students would be better off taking regents in high school. But my students are getting regents next year with or without me, so I will make the best of it, in the interest of my students as well as myself.

No News is News

As this school year winds down, it becomes more & more difficult to get things together for next year. Report cards demand attention, which means final exams need to be prepared, grades need to be computed. At the same time, students are being treated to numerous end-of-year activities, treats, field trips, and the like. Makes it difficult to maintain any semblance of organized instruction. Perhaps a good time to reflect on what went right or wrong with the current year and use that knowledge to prepare for next year.

A look at my preparations for next year betrays an ambitious attempt to be exceedingly organized. This derives from a realization this year that I never got a grip on the curriculum, never was clear about where I was going or how I was going to get there. Actually, I knew conceptually where I wanted to go, and I was clear in my mind about the content and the links from one content piece to another, but I had only a vague idea about the instructional part of it, how to get the students from where they were to where I wanted them to be. I was also over-optimistic about what the kids would be able to do themselves in terms of keeping a notebook, actively engaging in an activity, and so on. I relearned this year, after 3 years out of the classroom, how much our students demand structured instruction. They need tremendous help getting and keeping themselves organized. In order for me to provide that structure, I need to be doubly organized. Hence the planning and fretting about next year.

The Living Environment curriculum helps. It’s a rigorous program (especially for 8th graders). There’s lots of resources, including required labs, practice exams, review books, etc. There’s a good balance of pure content, broad conceptual understandings, process skills, and lab techniques. There’s a pre-determined final exam that will keep me focused, and it provides a great incentive for the kids – if they pass it they will enter 9th grade with one year of high school science and one of 5 required regents exams under their belts.

For next year I want to know ahead of time exactly what a notebook should look like – how it should be organized, how many sections they need, what to put in each section. That basically means I need a notebook of my own that will mirror theirs. I wish I could create a standardized lab report format for their lab notebooks, but so far I haven’t found any that are general enough for the wide variety of labs that we will do. Not all labs, for instance, are controlled experiments. I’ve seen too many lab report format samples force that structure onto labs that aren’t controlled experiments. A lot of labs involve building models or require simple observation of some phenomenon and inference about what’s going on, with little or no data per se, no real “problem question,” very little in the way of controlled variables. And don’t get me started on the misuses of the term hypothesis. So I may give up on the hope of finding a single lab report format and come up with 2-3 different formats and post them around the room for students to use as appropriate to each particular lab.

I also recently learned that I will have some help in the classroom in the form of a Columbia engineering student. He will work with me to plan some activities, about one every week, most likely involving the use of Vernier Probeware, which the Columbia program will provide. That’s exiting news, I’m just hoping we get some Co2 or Oxygen probes to do some photosynthesis/respiration labs. That would be way cool. I'm so looking forward to next year.

Student Voice Over

I have one example of a student voice over posted in the comment section of this post:

Test Question 2

I'm not happy with the restrictions on comments in my blogger account, which don't allow a commenter to post a target="_blank" tag, which would allow the animation and the voice over to pop up in their own respective windows, so now viewing the animation and voice over takes too many steps. I'm looking into using haloscan as an alternative comments handler.

For the sake of convenience, I'm posting the animation voice over here complete with pop-up windows:

Transpiration Animation

Voice Over

Living Environment Course Outline

Here's the planned sequence of my living environment course:

Unit 1: Introduction to Mental Models, Scientific Method & Living Environment

Unit 2: Evolution: Darwin's Model

Unit 3: Principles of Reproduction & Heredity – Mendel's Model

Unit 4: Cell Biology & Homeostasis

Unit 5: Modern Synthesis & Evolution of Life on Earth

Unit 6: Ecology

Unit 7: The Future & Human Impact on the Environment

Unit 8: Human Biology & Homeostasis

Rationale:

I would like to begin the year with a unit on evolution, since I truly believe the Dobzhansky quote about biology only making sense in the light of evolution. At the same time, I know that my students do not yet have the requisite background information to appreciate how evolution happens - heredity, genes, DNA, mutations, etc. I thought about the least number of steps I would need in order to get to evolution. I decided to break up the evolution unit and do a "simple," natural selection unit before heredity & cell biology. That will require revisiting modern synthesis after cell biology. On paper this makes sense, I'm just not sure my students will be able to handle the back-and-forth nature of such an approach. 

Of course Darwin formulated his theory of natural selection knowing nothing about genetics or simple Mendelian rules of heredity. Mendel, for his part, knew nothing about the actual mechanism for passing on traits - no idea what a "gene" was. He used the term "factors," a rather vague term for some unknown entity that was responsible for carrying traits. So why then must students know what genes are before studying heredity? Why must they understand heredity before they study evolution? I suspect that time is the issue. It simply takes longer to "cover the material" if we start with observable patterns and phenomena, then work toward the unobservable mechanisms. It seems easier to work from the mechanism, since the mechanism explains the phenomenon and is ultimately necessary to understand the phenomenon. But this is the reverse of how science usually works, and leaves the teacher open to the constant whining of "Why do we need to know this?" I want to start with the big questions - How did we get here? What makes us "us?" How do our bodies work? These are questions that students are genuinely interested in, and the answers to those questions require dabbling in some areas of study that are not otherwise immediately "interesting."

So, start with big ideas that arouse curiosity, then move to the details that are necessary to understand the big ideas, revisit big ideas. That's my approach to the extent possible. Learning is and teaching should be an iterative process.

The other difficult decision was whether to finish the year with ecology or human biology. Both are heavily tested on the exam, and both offer great opportunities to revisit major themes of the course. I decided that ending with human biology would be the most enjoyable for my students.

Planning the Course

My school uses a "looping" strategy for teacher rotation. What that means is that teachers follow their students from grade to grade: from grade 6 through grade 8 and back to grade 6 again.

This is a marvelous idea in theory and in practice has many benefits. Teacher get to know students much better, children feel more secure in having familiar faces in front of them every September, parents have fewer teachers to get to know and stay in contact with, just to name a few pluses.

On the other hand, (you knew that was coming) the policy is murderously difficult for science teachers. Planning and executing science instruction is unlike planning and execution of any other subject area. In New York State, the content is rigorous and unrelenting (a mile wide AND a mile deep if you read through the core curriculum objectives!). Science instruction demands not only a deep understanding of the content, but quite a bit of materials gathering before class, materials management in the classroom, and materials clean-up after class. No othe subject area teacher is faced with such a burden of planning, materials management, and cleaning-up.

Extensive planning goes down a lot more easily if you know that it will make your life simpler next year - you can build on and improve existing plans rather than starting from scratch. The logistical workload decreases and you can concentrate on doing a better strategic job in the classroom, polishing your presentation, anticipating student difficulties, etc.

With looping, that strategy breaks down and every year is like starting over. It's nearly impossible to store plans and materials from this year, not to be used again for 3 years.

I have spent most of this Memorial Day weekend planning for next year. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to plan a new course. I am enthusiastic about it, however, as I fully expect to be teaching Regents Living Environment for some time to come. I will be updating my website with new resources as they become available. My major accomplishment this weekend was to develop a vocabulary database for the living environment curriculum (with thanks to Bill Siebert via Mr. Comet). I am also creating a list of links to other science teachers who are teaching Regents Living Environment. Stay tuned.

Posting audio files

I had hoped to let students post audio files of their voice overs - looks like I will have to do a little extra work to get that to happen. I forgot that they cannot upload a file from the comments form. So, either I make a separate post for each voice over, or I upload the audio files to my website and place hyperlinks to the uploaded files in the comments section (which is what "upload" does anyway). At any rate, I have uploaded my own voice over - I wanted to play around with the recording aspect, and see how hard it would be to actually do a voice over. Not professional quality audio, and I'm not giving up my day job, but here's how to synchronize the voice over & the animation.

Both of the links below are designed to open up new, separate browser windows. Open the animation window first by clicking the link below:

Transpiration Animation

Then open the audio file below. Change the size of the windows so that both the animation and your audio player can be accessed at the same time. I've allowed a second or so at the beginning of the audio file, so press the play button for the audio, then the play button for the animation.

transpiration.wav

You may have to let both files run their course first, then synchronize. For some reason the files run automatically when open and I've not found a simple way to stop them before they are finished.

My timing on this recording isn't perfect, and with a slight adjustment I could make it better, but it's only here for illustrative purposes, so I'll leave it as is. When student recordings are ready, I'll post a link to them.

New Assignment for Students

I have posted another question for my (pilot) students. This is another animation but this time without a voice over. The students' assignment is to write a voice over for the animation.

Question 2 for Pilot Students

I'm not sure a blog is the best format for this type of assignment, but we will see how it goes. It is essentially a writing assignment, with the final results posted on the blog. As written, there isn't much room for dialog, which is the beauty of the blogging format. I suppose to make it more blog appropriate I could add in a collaborative component, in which students offer feedback to each other.

What I would really like is some way to record their voice overs, post the audio file, and find some way to open up the animation window and an audio window at the same time. Synchronizing should be simple enough. Just hit the play button at the opening cue from the voice over. I will work on that idea this week and see what I can come up with. I do have the ability to upload files, since the blog is hosted on my personal website.

Parental Consent

I sent a parental consent package home with the students who are participating in my "pilot" blog program. I have modified the NYC Internet Parental Consent Form for my specific purposes. The package also includes a cover letter from me to the parents, and a listing of the privacy & etiquette rules, which must be signed by students & parents.

I've decided on my strategy for addressing the sometimes ambiguous, often overly paranoid Internet Acceptable Use Policy. Firstly, it is rather vague about rules for teacher websites:

Subject to district-wide policies and procedures, teachers may establish Web pages for use with class activities or to provide a resource for other teachers. Teachers will be responsible for maintaining their class or educational resource sites. Teacher web pages will not be considered official material, but will be developed in such a manner as to reflect well upon the Department, district and school.

Secondly, there is a prohibition against interactive chat rooms and "live bulletin boards" (whatever they are):

Bulletin Boards and Chatrooms
Since we cannot monitor live bulletin boards and chat rooms to assure safety of content, we will not accept any Web pages containing bulletin boards or chat rooms.

The way I read this statement, however, is that the DOE will not HOST these services, but I don't see the statement as an outright prohibition against students accessing a bulletin board. But what if we do read it as an outright prohibition? What exactly is a blog? Does it fall in the same category as bulletin board? I would argue that it is more like a website, since I have control over what gets posted and what gets deleted and so on. Of course this is also true of a bulletin board, so I'm not sure what the DOE is thinking. They can monitor a bulletin board or a blog for safety of content just as easily as an any other website. I'm guessing that by "live bulletin board" they are really referring to a chat room, but by using the term bulletin board, they have created a terribly ambiguous policy. I could easily see an administrator telling me to shut down my blog based on a misreading of this policy.

I can also argue that the blog format I am using is nothing more than a way to display student work on the web. I could conceivably accomplish most of my goals using traditional teaching methods - assign students to view the animation, then assign them to write a response, collect the student work that resulted, and post it on a website. Doing this would be unambiguously conforming to the IAUP. It would also be terribly inefficient and less effective.

First Comments from Students

This is exciting. The first student responses to my test assignment are up. The very first comment shows at least two important results in using the blog as an educational tool. First, I can show very targeted, specific images to students related to a subject we are learning in class - in this case it was an animation of a virus infecting a cell - and be pretty sure that every student who does the assignment will actually be looking at the image, paying attention to it, and even thinking about it in terms of the classroom instruction on the topic. Secondly, every student gets to comment on the image and get feedback from me. It's like an individual tutorial.

I have to coach them to use the spellcheck or even compose their comments in a word processor first, then copy & paste into the comments box. I'm sure most of my students who have internet access at home probably are using dial-up, so it would probably be a good idea to compose comments offline, especially when the assignment calls for a more detailed response. At the same time, I have to find the proper balance between nit-picking their grammar/punctuation/etc. or enforcing the etiquette rules and keeping it fun.

Update

In the interest of efficiency, I will not repeat posts here that are on my class blogs but simply link to them. I'm getting a little concerned already about the redundant work involved in keeping separate blogs for two classes. I am trying to maintain each individual blog so that both classes have a sense of "ownership," but I'm quickly realizing this creates a bit of extra work for me. On the other hand, I don't see how it can work if 60 students (2 classes) are commenting on the same posts in the same blog.

I may at some point train an assistant to perform the redundant tasks.

I have recently posted to the class blogs:

A Note to My Students
outlining some rules about privacy & etiquette.

A Test Question
for a small group of students to do a little informal pilot program between now & the end of the school year. I want to see how it works on a small scale before launching at the end of June. My students will love the fact that I plan to engage them over the summer already for eighth grade science!

Welcome

It is only May 17, 2004, and I am so excited about teaching Regents Living Environment next year that I am planning furiously for September. I have begun reorganizing my website- originally a teachers-only resource - to take on a dual role of continuing to provide resources for teachers and now Living Environment students.

My goals in planning are:

• Develop a comprehensive syllabus


• Create a list of labs


• Prepare a list of materials needed


• Produce an information packet for students and parents to be delivered before the end of the current school year


• Develop a list of homework assignments for the year


• Create an online grading system so students & parents can always have access to progress, grades, assignments, etc.


• Develop worksheets and other templates for assignments


• Prepare notes and PowerPoint presentations


• Place as much material as possible on my website

This is probably a partial list, and I'm sure other ideas will pop into my head between now & September. So to the students I say, be prepared!