Arts Education

OK.  First things first.  You get some very funny looks when you buy this many lighters at Giant Eagle .  But, if you can push past that, and the occasional derogatory remarks, you have the beginnings of one of the very first inquiry labs I ever tried. I teach a lesson on the Ideal Gas Law, followed by a lesson on Dalton's Law of Partial pressures.  As part of my Dalton's lesson, I do a demo where I collect the CO2 from a diet coke by water displacement so that kids see why we need to learn about Dalton's Law.  Both lessons are followed by your standard practice problems, including one where we calculate molar mass of a gas. The next day in the lab I talk briefly about lighters and butane.  I suggest that if we collect a sample of the butane, by taking it out of the lighter, we can make some measurements and calculate its molar mass.  With just that short intro, I send them into the lab to develop a plan.  I won't give them the lighter until t...

Last week I attended OETC and presented two sessions.  The first session was about three ways to use technology in high school science classrooms in order to meet the increased demands of Ohio's new learning standards.  I presented the second session with my friend and colleague Tracy Coleman.  We showcased a template we created for teachers to use to make tasks that mirror the types of things students will need to do on the PARCC (math and ELA) and OCBA (science and social studies) tests. The template is a very simple Google Slides presentation.  The first slide contains the task and links to the other slides on the presentation.  The subsequent slides contain critical components of the task - readings or video or simulations - and are all linked back to the original task slide.  Teachers can drop in a couple of articles and a video to create a research synthesis task.  Here is what the template looks like: We showed some examples of ways to use ...

This week I presented a session at OETC on behalf of the Ohio Department of Education as a Network Regional Leader in Science and Technology.  My session was to focus on ways to meet the demands of Ohio's 2010 standards and next generation assessments.  ODE has provided a tool to help teachers evaluate their practice called the Quality Review Rubric.   At first glance, the QRR can be overwhelming, so I copied the language from the rubric into a word cloud generator and came up with the image at the top of this post.  The words that stand out for me are Students (right in the center where they should be), Reading, Writing, Research, Text, Investigations, Scientific, Build, Practices, Appropriate, and Level.  I showcased three tools as ways to incorporate technology while working toward improved instruction in these areas. Tool #1:  Using ActivelyLearn to meet the Literacy Standards I wrote about ActivelyLearn earlier this year.  There are so many thing...