Kat Enters the 21st Century

A new educator's first foray into modern media

Category: Tech Tools (Page 1 of 2)

Coding for Beginners (Like Me)

November 22, 2019 / / 0 Comments
A Question on My Mind

I’ve spent a lot of time in the field of professional and academic science, and one thing is clear: in order to go on in science, engineering, or technical fields, you need to learn how to code. At the post-secondary level, there are few classes offered on coding for non-computer science majors. I’ve had to learn to use R and MATLAB on the fly, or learn to use them as part of a course on statistics or signal processing, respectively. The most successful and in-demand of my former colleagues are the ones who came from a computer science background, and can code in multiple languages. Being able to see a problem and solve it by coding an application is the best way to get a job in the research field – or, honestly, probably any field.

So something I’ve been wondering is: as a high school science teacher, when is it appropriate to start teaching my students to code?

Screen capture from Hour of Code, showing coding games available for ‘pre-reader’ age children.

The answer, it seems, is ‘from before they can read’.

And Here’s How

Today in class, Rich McCue came in to give us an introduction to learning activities that teach students to code. There are a number of great resources out there, including Scratch (for beginners or younger kids as it’s mostly picture-based and requires little typing and no spelling), and Grasshopper. Grasshopper is a Google-based platform (see my post on Google for Education for my thoughts on Google’s brave new world), but don’t hold that against it. It is an incredibly intuitive app that guides and scaffolds the player through games that start out very easy, building self-efficacy, and build quickly toward real coding tasks.

Example of a game screen in Grasshopper. Screen capture.

In the game, your instructions are on the left, with the command screen in the middle. there are buttons ta the bottom as ‘building blocks’ of syntax, in case the student doesn’t feel comfortable typing right away. there is an example on the top right of what your code should create, and the bottom right shows what you have so far.

Remember how I said I’m not one to get into computer games? Well, having spent about half an hour with Grasshopper, I’m addicted. I’ve downloaded the app and can’t wait to play it on the bus tonight.

Screen capture from Hour of Code, showing coding games available for ‘pre-reader’ age children.

For hour-long lessons in coding, Hour of Code has compiled hundreds of games or sections of games that incorporate code and take about an hour to complete. On Hour of Code, you can search by subject area, level of experience, platform (iOS, Android, computer), and age level, and find fun activities to help get students engaged with coding.

As the CodeBC teachers’ guide to Computational Thinking states, computational thinking is the new literacy if the 21st century. I think of coding as a tedious, frustrating chore that I will never learn to do properly and that I do as little as possible. I believe it’s essential for high school students today to think of code as the opposite: a fun, engaging, and accessible activity that is as necessary for life as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Games like Grasshopper and the lessons on Hour of Code are great ways to get students started coding in a way that makes them want to code, and feel like they are good at it.

 

 

Google for Education

November 8, 2019 / / 0 Comments
Google Educating Educators on Google for Education

What?

Yep, today in EdTech we explored how to use Google applications for education, via the Google for Education training on the Teacher Centre. I was introduced to two things: 1) just how recursive Google and its subsidiaries are in terms of their self-advertisement and 2) you can use Google for everything, if you want. I use Google Drive and Hangouts, and I foresee myself using Google Classrooms once I start teaching. I have my own organization methods outside of Google Calendar, but I’ve used Calendar and Tasks with OneNote at a previous job. If everything in my life were run on Google, which is clearly what Google wants, then this might be a good organization tool, as well as a way to collaborate and keep track of students’ tasks.

Google wants to (help you) run your life.

But my entire life is not on Google, nor do I wish it to be. And, more importantly, nor do I wish my students’ lives to be wrapped up in Google exclusively. Students using other platforms may have other systems, and I would rather encourage my students to find their own (more secure) way to organize themselves and communicate/collaborate with their peers. The Google-world idea makes sense in perhaps a rural school or a correspondence school, such as SIDES. This does not, however, remove the issue of privacy and the fact that Google does not store its data in Canada. That means that if even one student does not get permission for data sharing, that student will be excluded from class activities and collaborations taking place on the Google platform.

My verdict? From the training that I managed to get through, I think I have a good working knowledge of how to use the Google applications that I already use.  I have slowly learned to use a number of these applications on my own, and if I am interested in using more, I’ll learn it the same way. I am technologically literate enough that, rather than a training course, I can look up or learn by exploring about other tools or uses for Google that I feel the need to add to my toolbox.

SkySafari: Finding Place in the Universe

November 8, 2019 / / 0 Comments
What Is SkySafari?

SkySafari is a free app that uses augmented reality and a massive historical and knowledge database to allow the user to learn about every star, constellation, and astral body in the sky at all times of day and year, and compare it to what was happening minutes, hours, days, or years ago! I think this counts as an environmental app for place-based learning, especially because stories and legends about the stars and the cosmos are so important to the culture of a place. We see different stars here than people do in Australia, and experience the motion of the planets differently than somebody in Colorado, for instance.  The way we see the stars is very specific to place, and learning more about how and why we see them that way is important to understanding the place you’re in.

Close-up Selection view of Mars, including its moons! Image by kyu3 on Photozou, under CC BY-SA 2.5.

How to use it for education

There are a ton of tools on this app. Using Compass, the phone’s screen turns into a planetarium, with an overlay of stars and other astral bodies that updates as you turn 360 degrees or change the angle of your phone up toward the sky or down toward the ground. The phone orients to the four compass directions, and uses GPS to locate the phone’s latitude and longitude, as well as the exact local time. At any time of day or night, the user can select any star in the sky that is shown on the app, and not only learn its name and what constellation it’s in, but using the Selection tool will open an information page with everything known about that astral body and its history. The International Space Station, all the planets in our solar system, Pluto, the Sun, and the Moon are also included and have a ton of info available. Using the Time tool, the user can see what was happening in the cosmos at any time over the last several decades. Using these tools, students can explore the ‘night sky’ at any time of day, wherever they are – including in the classroom!

The solar system lies along a flat plane called the ecliptic, which you can discover using the orbit of the planets, sun, and moon over time. Image by PlanetUser on Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 3.0).

A cool lesson with this app could be using paper cut-outs and string to represent the movement of certain stars or planets over a year. This could apply to art, science, or even English (explaining the principles of astronomy to make sense of Shakespeare’s “star-crossed lovers” maybe?)! In Social Studies, you could have a ‘day at the planetarium’ by dimming the lights in your classroom and using the app to mark the constellations on the wall to link them to Greek and Roman mythology. You could even find some Indigenous stories about the stars and bring those viewpoints into the conversation!

There are some other cool features as well, like the Night setting (switches the phone’s display to all red light for night viewing), the Tonight tool (shows the rising and setting time of planets, satellites, and notable stars coming up that night), and Notifications (pops up when an interesting event like a planetary transit, comet sighting, or ISS visible, is about to happen).

Pros
  • Free (although there are pop-ups advertising in-app purchases, these are easily dismissed)
  • Cross-platform (Available on Play Store for Android and App Store on Apple devices)
  • Versatile, with many tools for students to explore
  • Works day and night, any time of year
  • Contains seemingly limitless extra information on every visible object in the night sky
  • Can go ‘back in time’ using the Time function to understand planet/star movements
  • Unlike some stargazing apps, it has the outer planets and Pluto
Cons
  • Uses WiFi, but would require data if outside or out of WiFi range
  • Does not contain every star in the sky (but has most of the easily-visible ones)
  • The download is big, and will take up precious space on students’ devices
  • Some pre-knowledge of where to find things will help, but is not really necessary once you start exploring!

Wolves and Airships and Axes, oh Minecraft!

November 1, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Today we had a team of experts from Colquitz Middle School come to UVic and teach us how to use Minecraft EDU, an educational application of a computer game that I haven’t really thought about since my friends got into it about ten years ago. We learned about the ways Minecraft can be used to promote teamwork, communication and collaboration, creativity, and survival skills in students and classes. The experts told us about projects they have done in Minecraft, including building competitions using Creative mode and ancient civilization simulations using Survival mode, and code machine-like creations using certain materials! Their teacher also showed us how to design a game and curate the students’ interactions. There are pre-built worlds and games for several different age groups, and in different core subjects, although if the teacher is well-versed at creating in Minecraft, building your own worlds is the best idea.

Then they let us play:

Some of my classmates with more experience built a ship in the sky!

Little wolves were very friendly and followed us around – until it gets dark. Then they get deadly!

These players created a house out of pink and purple stone…then filled it with puppies!

I have to admit, I am not the kind of person who gets into video games. I didn’t find anybody to play with right away, and with no idea what I was doing, I spent a lot of my time ‘in game’ wandering around and watching other people create.

All the same, I was completely immersed in the world, and felt, as the Colquitz teacher put it, “as though the mouse was my new eyes”.  Despite my lack of engagement in the game, I really enjoyed watching other people play and get really involved in it. This tells me that Minecraft EDU would be a great way for me to let my students explore, play, and teach me more about how this immersive and completely customizable tool.

However, this is also a caution. In any class, there will be students who are as overwhelmed, inexperienced, or easily frustrated with this game as I was. Building (or using one of the pre-built) games with specific goals and making teamwork a priority would be necessary in this case, so that students are more motivated to work together and bring their peers up to speed. My feeling is that I need more experience with Minecraft before I can ever consider building it into my classes. If my buy-in is low, students will sense this. If my expertise is shaky, there is only so much patience my students can be expected to have in teaching me. It was interesting to watch my colleagues get immersed and really passionate about the game, and I can see many of them building Minecraft and other immersive games into their curricula. For me? I’ll stick to real dogs for now.

Project-Based Learning at Esquimalt High

October 30, 2019 / / 0 Comments

As part of our Multiliteracies class, we had the opportunity this past month to work with a group of students from Esquimalt High School on a project that they were passionate about. This was an open inquiry-style project, and the projects that grew out of it represented emergent learning. I had the opportunity to work with another of the pre-service teachers in the program on a project that interested both of us. I learned a lot during this experience about how to relate to today’s students, how to build trust and rapport with them, and how to enable them to do work that they couldn’t do on their own by providing effective scaffolding and collaborations.

Our Students

Image from PxHere (Public Domain).

My colleague and I ended up attaching ourselves to a group of four students who were all passionate about organizing a class trip to Carmanah-Walbran Provincial Park. All four had strong opinions about the logging of old-growth forest on Vancouver Island, and wanted their classmates to see the beauty of the forest (and the devastation of the surrounding clear cuts) for themselves. These students were part of a challenge program, and so were already very high-achieving youth that are in their final year of high school. In addition to this project, they are all dealing with the stress of graduating, applying to university, and finishing their year with strong grades. They were fantastic resources for us, as they knew the school and the staff within it well, and were able to access the resources within the school that we needed.

As challenge students that are very involved in their school and community, our group were already quite comfortable interacting with adults, which made it easy to establish a respectful rapport with them.  They were able to clearly articulate their ideas, and were also very aware of their own strengths. With very little prompting, they were able to put together a plan of action and self-organize into loose but interchangeable roles: the researcher, the artist, the designer, and the logistics handler.

Our Project

The group agreed that their goal in this project was to win their class over to the cause, in order to prepare a field trip proposal to take to the administration for approval. As outdoor educators, my colleague and I were both able to advice on the kinds of logistics required, as well as offer suggestions toward a ‘save the forest propaganda campaign’. This campaign came together as follows:

  1. The students contacted a researcher at the Pacific Forestry Center and arranged for him to come in and talk to the class about the importance of preserving old growth rainforest.
  2. The students independently researched and produced multimodal publication (called a ‘zine, pictured below) aimed at informing their classmates about the issues facing the Carmanah and Walbran valleys.
  3. With minimal input, the students explored arrangements for camping accommodations, transportation, and possible dates for the field trip, to begin the process of their application.

Front and back cover of ‘zine. Photo by me.

Inside of ‘zine. Photo by me.

Opportunistic Collaboration

It so happens that another pre-service teacher in our cohort is a member of the Friends of Carmanah Walbran collective, and was in possession of some cedar with which the organization was planning to make trail marker signs. We were able to take advantage of the opportunity for our students to design these signs themselves, as the colleague I was working with is also a visual artist and had access to the CNC router at UVic’s Digital Fabrication Lab. Using a free design program, our students produced another product: two trail marker signs that the class will take with them on their field trip and install in the Carmanah (pictured below).

Photo by me.

This was a phenomenal experience, and I hope that our students keep in touch about the results of their efforts!

Teaching Climate Science with Windy

October 29, 2019 / / 0 Comments
What is Windy?

Windy is an app (available free for Android and Apple users – with no ads!) developed by a Czech kite enthusiast as a way to visualize weather models. It’s also available in browser format, which I’d highly recommend using for demonstrations and screen captures. It’s an amazing and versatile app that could be used to learn about Earth’s weather systems, climate change, and the nature of predictive models. It’s used daily by sailors, surfers, governments, disaster-relief organizations, storm-watchers, and anybody who wants to know the weather. I use it to check forecasts before boating or doing field work near the water, and sometimes I just have it running in the background because it’s a beautiful interface and it’s fun to watch hurricanes and typhoons form and move before my very eyes!

Explanation of the most commonly-used parts of the Windy interface. Screen capture and labels by me.

Using the interface, you can toggle on/off a variety of layers including wind speed/direction (including particle motion animation), rain/snow accumulation, cloud cover, barometric pressure (with colour and/or isobars), humidity, tide level, and others. You can also toggle on/off the locations of airports, popular surfing spots, weather stations, ports and marinas, etc. You can search for locations, although I’ll caution that the fine-scale accuracy (accounting for the presence of islands, mountains, etc. within a city) is rather poor – it’s mostly used for wider-scale predictions. The user uses the same types of motions to zoom in and out or move around the map as is used in most mapping programs, including Google Maps, so it’s really intuitive. The units of measurement (precipitation, wind speed, etc.) are customizable, so you can set it to metric or imperial units if you wish. You can even change the altitude, so you ca have a look at how the pressure changes 2 km above us, or visualize the Gulfstream, or look at the ‘top’ end of a hurricane.

Using it in Class

I can think of a dozen ways to use Windy off the top of my head, but here are some ideas to get started:

  • Current events. As part of a unit on weather or climate change, get students to find a weather-related news story from somewhere in the world and use Windy to visualize it and show the class.
  • The fallibility of models. To help students understand that weather models are predictive but not deterministic, get them to check Windy each day from Monday to Thursday and write down what the app says the weather will be on Friday.  In fact, Windy allows you to switch between different models to compare them. The students will notice that the prediction changes each day, and that the prediction might not be completely correct when Friday rolls around. This helps them understand that any predictive model is only as good as the inputs, and that the results may not be what is predicted. Despite the pretty pictures, Windy is not showing what happens; it’s showing what is predicted to happen.
  • Place-based learning. Ask students to report about a particular place in Canada, and what the climate of that place is. They can use Windy to illustrate their reports.
  • Demonstrations of real-life phenomena. This is where screen-capture technology comes in. Rather than illustrating concepts like pressure differentials, Coriolis effect, front systems, and energy movement around the Earth, why not show students using a dynamic tool like Windy? Screen captures from Windy can ask students to play along on their phones, or just observe as the teacher demonstrates textbook concepts with real-time predictions of hurricane formation, El Nino, the Gulfstream, prevailing wind directions, and the effect of the ocean on coastal climate?

This app can be used in other contexts than science (art comes to mind, as well as geography). I highly encourage you to download this app and play with it. While this is not formally part of my EdTech inquiry on environmental apps for place-based learning, I’d like to highlight it here regardless. No pros and cons list for this app, because there are so few real cons!

 

ePortfolios and Individualized Learning

October 27, 2019 / / 0 Comments
It’s All About Choices

I first heard about strategies for individualized learning when I was a biology lab TA at Western Washington University, while pursuing my M.Sc. It was being applied to upper-level biology classes at the time, to mixed success. When I began teaching secondary field school at Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre’s field trip program, individualized outcomes were the norm: students were encouraged to show their learning in a variety of ways depending on the instructor, the group, the setting, and the material. Often, my fellow instructors and I allowed different students to use different modalities. The catch is, none of our activities were graded or held to a curricular standard.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve learned a ton of strategies for translating individualized evidence of learning into standardized grades, and using it to fulfill curricular requirements. PSII provided an excellent example with their ‘percent completion’ and four-point status scale (I think emerging-developing-proficient-enriching?) instead of letter grades, which only get translated to grades at the end of the year to satisfy BC requirements.

ePortfolios make learning visible AND  transparent

Photo from App Store.

I recently had a field trip to Lansdowne Middle School, where we spoke to Vice-Principal Hilary Braid-Skolski and 6th-grade teacher Meaghan Abra about the school’s focus on individualized learning, and how they have expertly used ePortfolio platforms to weave individualized learning into curricular competencies, parent involvement, teacher feedback, student metacognition, and inquiry-based practice. It was the most concrete lesson I’ve had yet on how to actually DO inquiry-based and individualized learning inside the public school paradigm, and it really changed my thinking about how accessible this kind of system could be to me as a high school science educator. Both of our hosts were able to speak to the reality of converting ePortfolios into grades, and were blunt about the fact that inquiry-based practice needs to be scaffolded carefully at first.

One of the first assignments to go up on FreshGrade has very concrete instructions. As learners get more familiar, this scaffolding is slowly removed.

The software that Lansdowne uses (which our hosts hastened to say is not the best system, but is what they can work with right now) is FreshGrade. Ideally, I think Lansdowne would eventually like to develop their own system like PSII has, but for now FreshGrade is working alright for them. We were able to get a comprehensive run-down of the platform, including the back-end setup, to a point where I feel comfortable exploring it on my own. There are even helpful flowcharts and checklists on the walls of Meaghan Abra’s classroom that her students (and the pre-service teachers) can refer to when they submit work on FreshGrade!

Self-assessment criteria for students. Photo taken by me, with permission.

Reminders for students about what should be included in the metacognitive reflection that goes with their FreshGrade submissions. Photo taken by me, with permission.

This kind of concrete skill development is what I want more of from this program! The trip to Lansdowne helped me put a lot of loose puzzle-pieces of pedagogical techniques I’ve been learning and slot them satisfyingly into place, because it was based in learning a tool, instead of more abstract theory that we’re meant to apply on our own.

Look out FreshGrade, I’m coming for you!

LifeScanner: DNA in Action

October 25, 2019 / / 0 Comments
What is LifeScanner?

LifeScanner is an app that works with the Barcode of Life Database (BOLD Systems) at the University of Guelph. It includes a database of all the specimens collected all over the planet, as well as kits that allow users to send in their own specimens. I’d like to propose that it has the potential to be used not just to identify species, but as a tool to address essential questions related to biology and inter-curricular inquiries.

Photo by Mike Beauregard on Flickr (under CC BY 2.0).

How can it be used for education?

The app itself can be used to identify species, look up animals that live in your area, and learn about the biodiversity in your backyard, region, or country. With the collection kits, a class could collect and send in specimens to BOLD for DNA barcoding. By exploring the app, students learn more about some of the applications of DNA sequencing and what it can be used to do, like identify food fraud, discover new species, and track the effects of climate change on animal distributions. A class field trip to a park or beach could include using the app to make and check off a list of commonly found animals, helping the students improve their powers of observation. Or, conversely, students could photograph as many animals as they can find, then check with the app to see which ones they did not find, and hypothesize why they were not found. ELL or second-language students could pick an animal, research it, and give a presentation of what they found, expanding their vocabulary.

Using the kits, students are engaged in exploration to find a specimen, develop photography skills to get a set of diagnostic photos, practice hypothesis development when trying to identify the animal as best they can, and participate in real-life citizen science by contributing their specimens to the worldwide BOLD database, which they can see on their app! Students could also be asked to investigate food fraud by collecting samples of meat or seafood that they suspect is not what is labelled (sushi is great for this).

Pros
  • App is free!
  • Gets students outside exploring their environment
  • Interactive way to learn about genetic technology
  • Students can actively contribute to a body of scientific knowledge
  • Fun way to learn about the diversity of local species
  • Teaches practical skills of observation, photography, search terms in databases
  • Students learn about proper food labelling, and the prevalence of food fraud
Cons
  • Currently only available on Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, etc.)
  • Collection kits are expensive ($50 for 4 collection kits)
  • Animal specimens need to be small enough to fit in the tube or a piece has to be cut off, so the database comprises mostly invertebrate species (i.e. great for bugs or tidepooling, but not birding)
  • To collect whole animals, they do have to be sacrificed. This is a moral dilemma that should be discussed as a class, and students should not be required to collect specimens.
Curricular Areas

LifeScanner applications could be used for Science 9/10 (exploring local biodiversity), Life Sciences 11 (DN sequencing, biodiversity, and taxonomy), social studies (food labelling), art (photography, biodiversity), and ELL/second languages (learning French/Spanish words for animals, practicing communication), and math (point sampling, survey methods).

 

Citizen Science and Place-Based Learning: eBird

October 18, 2019 / / 0 Comments

I am what you would call a pre-amateur birder. I like birds, and from my time as a marine biologist I can easily identify several birds that are common on the water, as well as some that are more common on land. I don’t own a pair of binoculars or a telephoto lens, but I do own a Sibley bird guide which I sometimes bring on hikes. But after exploring eBird, I am really excited about using this app in my classes!

Barn Owl by seabamirum on Flickr (under CC BY 2.0)

What is eBird?

eBird is a citizen science bird-reporting app that is produced and curated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (CLO), and is supported by Merlin Bird ID (reviewed here by my partner Brigitte). It is free to download on all platforms (supported by a browser edition), can be used offline, and comes in over 30 languages. It has a built-in bird identification interface that links to Merlin, which can be used offline. It’s a way for birdwatchers to keep track of their birding finds, with metrics available to help you track your sightings compared to previous years and months. Once the phone enters WiFi reception again, all these sightings are sent directly to a database monitored by CLO, which anybody can access.

Want to find the best birding sites around Chiang Mai, Thailand? Want to know the hotspots in your area for really rare birds to check off your list? Want to see what time of year people see the most pelicans in your area? All can be found with the database. Scientists use the database to create, modify, and track range maps and migration routes on large and small scales. They can even use the data that this app has generated already to study the impacts of climate change on birds! The best part is that all users can follow one another, so students can look at local users to find good spots for birding. As a teacher, you can also track what your students are seeing (or whether they’re getting their walks in) by following their accounts. See below for an introductory video from the CLO YouTube channel:

 

How can it be used for education?

As an educational app, eBird has amazing potential for several different curricular areas including science, art, social studies, and even math! It gives an opportunity for students to:

  • Engage with their environment and have an excuse to take their phone on a walk
  • Participate in friendly competition among students for the most birds/rarest birds/most excursions, etc.
  • Contribute in a real way to a body of knowledge that is actually used by scientists and users all over the world
  • Be introduced to the biological and mathematical ideas of point-counts, population ecology, statistical likelihood, survey methods, and identification.
  • Get outside with friends and learn more about what is special about their backyards!
Pros
  • App is free, ad-free, and available on all platforms
  • Easy and intuitive to use
  • Number and length of birding expeditions can be curated by the teacher by following student accounts
  • Can be used with Merlin to identify birds from a photo
Cons
  • Merlin Bird ID must also be installed to use identification service
  • Bird lists (eBird) and ID packages (Merlin) must be downloaded in WiFi range before heading into the field
  • A baseline level of bird knowledge is required by the teacher to check students’ work

Environmental Apps for Place-Based Learning

September 27, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Photo taken by Virginia State Parks on Flickr, under Creative Commons license CC BY 2.0.

The four of us (Kay, Kat, Caitie, Kate, and Brigitte) are looking into ways to incorporate place-based learning into our classes. We have diverse teachable areas, but we’re all interested in helping our students get more in-touch with nature and with the local species in their area. in my personal experience (Kat), knowing more about the natural world around me helps me feel more at home in a place, and better able to connect to it. As we get more and more involved in technology in the classroom, we all wanted to ‘take a step outside’, so to speak, and think of ways to use technology to get more in touch with sense of place.

The following is a list of nature apps that we know of, and might be exploring this term:

iNaturalist/Seek

Lifescanner

Merlin Bird ID

Picture Insect

eBird

Leafsnap

Seaweed Sorter

And more that we will find over the next week or so! Our current plan is to investigate each app and rate them on usability, quality of database, value-for-price, and number of applications to a class or unit. This will get tweaked in the coming weeks as we talk more about our plans, so stay tuned!

 

 

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