Scratch Project

Scratch Projects are projects that are created by students, using simplified computer programming to design and create games, activities, and presentations.

 Here is a sample introduction to a science lesson that I created with Scratch.

Scratch helps support the development of 21st century skills. According to Learning with Scratch,  it "enables students to express themselves more fully and creatively, helps them develop as logical thinkers, and helps them understand the workings of the new technologies that they encounter everywhere in their everyday lives."

Sratch projects can be an easy way to meet the ISTE_NETS-T Standard 1a: promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness. By giving the students the programming tools that allow them to be creative in digital media, they are able to express their understanding of concepts in a much more innovative way than with standard curriculum tools (tests, reports, etc). The nature of Scratch fosters creativity by default, without having to specifically assign or teach creativity. This leads to individual discovery and personal satisfaction, in a way that standard resources may not.

This lesson would tie in perfectly with the following CSO: SC.O.B.2.2 relate the structure of cellular organelles to their functions and interactions in eukaryotic cells. Here is a project I found that would be great to use in a science lesson about the basic cell. I think it's great that by hovering over the different diagram parts, you get information. This connects a visual model to the content being read, which improves understanding.

Google Apps Lesson Plan Introduction

For our Google Apps Lesson Plan, we will be using WebQuest: New 7 Wonders of Nature.

This lesson plan says it's geared for grades 4-6, but we feel that it could easily be adapted for use in Earth Science on a high school level. With that in mind, we feel this lesson meets the following CSO: SC.O.E.1.3:

Objective:

Students will conduct and/or design investigations that incorporate the skills and attitudes and/or values of scientific inquiry (e.g., established research protocol, accurate record keeping, replication of results and peer review, objectivity, openness, skepticism, fairness, or creativity and logic).

This assignment will be done with a partner: Jonathan's blog

Video Games and Learning: Personal Response

The three videos listed in the previous blog have greatly helped me to appreciate all the potential that gaming has for student's cognitive development.

•  In the first video, the presenter claims that the areas of the brain that are responsible for focusing and attention span, are actually more active an efficient in action gamers than others. I believe that the best way for kids to be successful learners is to be not only engaged in educational activities at school, but also at home. If kids have a healthy amount of game play time at home, this may help stimulate their brain in ways that will help them be successful in school.
• In the second video, the presenter claims that The 5 things found to increase Fluid Intelligence (problem solving) are to seek novelty, challenge yourself, think creatively, do things the hard way, and network. These are all present in many popular action games today. It is no surprise that learning how to effectively problem solve is one of the primary goals of education today. Again, if engaging in gaming can help develop one's brain to problem solve more effectively in real ways, it can lead to greater success in school.
• In the third video, the presenter claims that since kids know when playing games that there is a way for them to be successful at it (beat a level, achieve certain points or rewards, etc) they look forward to the challenge and don’t easily become discouraged, but thrive on the challenge of it. If this type of mindset could be achieved in the classroom, it could have profound results. Often students become discouraged at failure or the feeling that they will never be good at a particular area of study, or even school in general. If we can get students to believe that success is possible and can actually be fun and rewarding, I believe we will see much more highly motivated students who want to learn because they believe they can.

Concordia University has an interesting publication online on the effectiveness of video games as curriculum. 

• The Quest To Learn School (which was also mentioned in some of the videos above) is showing great success when using gaming as the backbone of the curriculum. The school’s curriculum is based on evidence that shows people learn much more effectively when they can immediately put knowledge to use in a social context as opposed to merely being told facts.

Video Games and Learning

In this video, researcher Daphne Bavelier asserts that in reasonably doses playing action video games actually have quite powerful and positive effects on many different aspects of our behavior.

1. Action gamers that spend 5-15 hours per week playing, have better eyesight than those who do not. They statistically see in greater detail and resolve different levels of gray easier.
2. Action gamers can track 6-7 objects at a time effectively, while most people can only track 3-4 effectively. This is especially helpful in tasks like driving.
3. The areas of the brain that are responsible for focusing and attention span, are actually more active an efficient in action gamers than others.

In this video, Gabe Zichermann asserts that perhaps instead of children having ADD, the real world is just too “slow” for their minds; that “gamification” can actually aid in students ability to learn and increase intelligence.

1. Children have to have incredible multitasking skills to have success in video games. This type of activity has profound impacts on your brain. There was a study conducted that found that when people participated in a stimulating activity, the amount of gray matter in their brain increased.
2. The 5 things found to increase Fluid Intelligence (problem solving) are to seek novelty, challenge yourself, think creatively, do things the hard way, and network. These are all present in many popular action games today.
3. Video games fundamentally provide an exponential increase in learning to users. They are constantly evolving and moving forward. The dopamine released in your brain when you succeed at an activity (in gaming) leads you to return to that activity over and over, therefore creating an intrinsic motivation to continue learning.

In this video,  Katie Salen asserts that play is an important aspect of human development, and also that gaming provides many opportunities to cultivate characteristics that are desirable in the 21st century including teamwork, multitasking, problem solving, exploration etc.

1. Games work in  the same way that good teachers work. There is a clear connection. Game developers are constantly asking “what does my player need to know to do well at this task” in the same way a teacher asks about their students. This sets up scaffolding which is providing learning support to students and then slowly retracting support so that students become self-reliant. 
2. A game should not be seen as the sole tool for education, but rather teachers should recognize how a game can be used to aid in a student’s overall curriculum experience. If they approach games in this way they can be quite useful and not distracting to students or daunting to work with for themselves. 
3. When kids work with digital media they take on the role of a designer. What that means is they are thinking about who their audience is. That can be a very useful mind process to be considering in the 21st century. 
4. Also, since kids know when playing games that there is a way for them to be successful at it (beat a level, achieve certain points or rewards, etc) they look forward to the challenge and don’t easily become discouraged, but thrive on the challenge of it. If this type of mindset could be achaieved in the classroom, it could have profound results.

Multiple Intelligences

This image represents my intelligence types. I have musical intelligence, as well as logical/mathematical intelligence.

• What is your position on learning styles?
• I feel that learning styles are important because, as a teacher our job is to help students reach their full learning potential. If the information we are presenting is only being presented in one way, we may be inadvertently catering to particular learning styles and not reaching all students effectively. 
• However, it is important to remember that not all content can be presented in every style, and therefore the teacher must first and foremost consider what the best options are to convey the meaning of the content.  
• I tend to take an approach to learning styles as presented in the Grasha-Riechmann Learning Styles Model: I believe it is not as important to spend a vast amount of time trying to figure out each individual's learning style and cater every detail of every lesson to each individual's learning preferences, but rather incorporate varied techniques of presenting information so that there is equal opportunity for all styles to be accommodated (Montgomery, 1998). 
• Furthermore, by presenting in different ways and using different kinds of activities for the students, we not only reach their particular style but also may increase their capabilities to learn from other styles as well (Montgomery, 1998). 
• How might you use the concept of learning styles in your future classroom?
• I plan on using learning styles in the classroom in general ways. Instead of doing every lesson catered to learning styles, I will first decide what the best method is based on what is to be understood from the content. I will then use different methods to present information, and different types of activities to reach students in a variety of ways. 
• For example, this lesson  in corporates a variety of activities to encourage understanding.
• What is your MI? What kinds of learning activities support your MI?
• My MI styles are Musical Intelligence and Logical/Mathematical Intelligence. 
• Activities that support these kinds of MI are:
• Musical
• Create a poem with an emphasis on certain sounds for pronunciation. 
• Clap out or walk out the sounds of syllables. 
• Read together (choral reading) to work on fluency and intonation.
• Read a story with great emotion — sad, then happy, then angry. Talk about what changes — is it only tone? 
• Work with words that sound like what they mean (onomatopoeia). For example: sizzle, cuckoo, smash. 
• Read lyrics to music. 
• Use music as background while reviewing and for helping to remember new material. 
• Use rhymes to remember spelling rules, i.e., "I before E except after C.
• Logical/Mathematical
• Arrange cartoons and other pictures in a logical sequence.
• Sort, categorize, and characterize word lists.
• While reading a story, stop before you've finished and predict what will happen next.
• Explore the origins of words.
• Play games that require critical thinking. For example, pick the one word that doesn't fit: chair, table, paper clip, sofa. Explain why it doesn't fit.
• Work with scrambled sentences. Talk about what happens when the order is changed.
• After finishing a story, mind map some of the main ideas and details.
• Write the directions for completing a simple job like starting a car or tying a shoe.
• Make outlines of what you are going to write or of the material you've already read. 
• Look for patterns in words. What's the relationship between heal, health, and healthier?
• Look at advertisements critically. What are they using to get you to buy their product?

References:

            Montgomery, S. (1998). Student learning styles and their implications for teaching. Informally published manuscript, Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, University of Michigan, Retrieved from http://www.crlt.umich.edu/sites/default/files/resource_files/CRLT_no10.pdf

Learning Styles

Learning Styles Don't Exist

• You don't learn in 3 ways, you store information in 3 ways. For instance, you store images visually, voices auditorally, and how to ride a bicycle kinesthetically. 
• Most of what teachers try to convey is meaning based, not visual or audible based.
• The prediction that people who recall things visually will always learn better visually, is not true. 
• You cannot assume that a person will always learn better visually if they understood one concept after being shown a visual example. In reality, they may have just needed one more example for the concept to click, or the visual analogy was simply a good one. This doesn't mean that this student needs a visual example for every concept to learn better.

Multiple Types of Intelligence

• Human beings have different kinds of intellectual strengths. These strengths are important when learning and creating.
• Education is unfair to students because it only caters to one kind of learner if the information is always presented in the same manner.
• By creating a learning environment which presents information in different ways that creates personal experiences for the students, it allows the child to represent their understanding in a way that is comfortable to them. The child learns then from personal experience which relies on their intelligence style, rather than a cookie cutter list of definitions and concepts that the student may be disconnected from.

According to The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, learning-style theory has its roots in the psychoanalytic community; multiple intelligences theory is the fruit of cognitive science and reflects an effort to rethink the theory of measurable intelligence embodied in intelligence testing. 

Both, in fact, combine insights from biology, anthropology, psychology, medical case studies, and an examination of art and culture. But learning styles emphasize the different ways people think and feel as they solve problems, create products, and interact. The theory of multiple intelligences is an effort to understand how cultures and disciplines shape human potential. Though both theories claim that dominant ideologies of intelligence inhibit our understanding of human differences, learning styles are concerned with differences in the process of learning, whereas multiple intelligences center on the content and products of learning.

Teacher of The Year Magazine Cover

Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought. 

--Albert Szent-Gyorgi