For this week's blog and wiki review, I'm going to start by how I've seen K-12 blogs and teacher wikis used in the classroom firsthand. Then, I'll provide examples of my online research.
Assessment Blogs
As part of my job (responsible for a corporation's Education Outreach Program), I present Traveling Science Programs at K-12 schools across Wisconsin. In one of my programs, for their assessment, the students created blogs on what they learned in the science program - from the review of the scientific method to the discussion of key vocabulary to how key concepts worked.
How did they develop content for their blogs? The students loaded their program photographs to help explain their points and identified their experimentation results, analyzing trends, data and areas for improvement.
How did they get involved in higher-level learning? The 10-year-old scientists peer-reviewed each other's blogs, and open communication was encouraged to simulate real-world science discussions in a science community. Results were questioned, and scientists needed to provide evidence-based proof in defense of their results.
What was the interactivity of this blog? The blog started as an assessment/report, then turned into a Science Journal with data analysis, and finally, a Science Symposium with students embracing science by acting like real scientists with conclusions to articulate to the class...and me, the scientist.
This example meets my first guiding principle of using technology to increase science understanding, and supports what we've learned in Chpt. 1 of Educational Technology in the Science Classroom: technology is used to address worthwhile science in ways that are pedagogically appropriate. K-12 blogs were used as an assessment tool that verified and enhanced student understanding, and helped build important science skills: communication, data relevance and inquiry.
I believe good science is based on doubt (inquiry or questioning). These students questioned each other, raising the level of critical thinking required to defend experiment results with scientific reasoning.
So what am I still wondering? Was a blog the best Web tool for this work, or would a wiki would have been better?
Teacher Wikis
In having the opportunity to teach in numerous classroom settings, I've seen many teachers having their own site that catalogs their best-found lessons and activities (which isn't necessarily a wiki). In a Science Methods course that I just finished co-teaching, my co-teacher had pre-service teachers form a wiki to begin cataloging activities, lessons and more to prepare for and use during future classroom instruction.
How was wiki content developed and organized? For each science academic standards, teachers found on activity or lesson and added it to the site. Their lessons and activities were evaluated based on the relevance to the academic standard, among other criteria.
How did teachers respond to the tool? Using pbwiki was a mess. There were editing glitches when we were all online together, and many teachers were frustrated. The second time around google docs were used by my co-teacher to develop the collaborative page. This seemed better.What am I still wondering...is how effective was the incorporation of this tool in a post-secondary setting to prepare teachers to teach science? My thinking (and huge assumption) is because it isn't their own classroom site, they won't use it (going off what I've seen teachers using in the classrooms). I'm not sure if they reviewed other activities and lessons added, so if they do return to the site, they may simply pull a link to their individual Web page.
This example does not meet my guiding principles. It was using a Web tool to do old things in more time-consuming, frustrating ways. Although it did create exposure to Web tools, it did not explain and utilize the tools in a way that promoted interactive learning. Furthermore, it didn't stick. Teachers did it (for their assignment), but no one said they were actually going to use it.
And now, what I found online.
After finally finding a way to search for K-12 blogs (Google > Search > K-12 Science Blogs) that resulted in what I was trying to research, I found the following:
Blogs
- http://scienceblogs.com/ From this blog (collection of a variety of blogs), I was able to find cutting-edge content and relevant examples to use in the classroom. Here are two of my favorite examples because they promote inquiry and examples of science in action.
Wikis
- http://k12wiki.wikispaces.com/ This wiki seems to be a collaboration of learning between many states. Here are the two examples I enjoyed (Can a coke can be blended?):
- http://k12wiki.wikispaces.com/Simulated+Laboratory+Resources+for+K-12+science
- http://k12wiki.wikispaces.com/speters
These meet my guiding principles of value-added content because the selected tools provide the latest information (even up to the last 24 hours!) on a variety of science topics and aspects of science. However, I had a lot of difficulty finding any student-generated sites. And the ones I did find were more teacher resources to use in various ways in the K-12 classroom. Does this support student-centered, guided discovery models? More learning and research is definitely necessary.
In general, I'm wondering how ethical Web tools are when they are used in the classroom? Is there more cheating? Are the students actually iterating what they know or copying what someone else knows, opposing the goals of increasing science understanding and bridging science-achievement gaps?
Final thought: Now that I've been exposed to a couple of Web tools, I realize there's more available on the Web then my mind imagined.
Thanks -- you have shared some great resources and thoughts here. I think cheating is really easy to spot when it is online. All it takes is a simple Google search of the content!
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