tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70444792644934860682024-03-18T14:08:07.487-04:00Productive & ConstructiveReflections on teaching & learningGary G. Abud, Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10082000053180484544noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-50059564315375154982013-07-28T16:29:00.004-04:002013-07-28T16:32:47.750-04:00My Blog Is On the Move!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Alas, it is time to say farewell to Blogger...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmJWWwKhESDcnn1q19kFy43ANmpiHjIsFm0wRh859l2IH-9Ij_j4-oppfpWrVJcnC4QkRSFv5T1PelPp_iZpTTaUE8z37OSxiHkp5Af21I9yMSKFQqocJCgqeSnp7uti8uk7n2frV5i6w/s1600/c+ya.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmJWWwKhESDcnn1q19kFy43ANmpiHjIsFm0wRh859l2IH-9Ij_j4-oppfpWrVJcnC4QkRSFv5T1PelPp_iZpTTaUE8z37OSxiHkp5Af21I9yMSKFQqocJCgqeSnp7uti8uk7n2frV5i6w/s200/c+ya.jpg" width="200" /></a>In the next month, I will be migrating my Blogger education blog to my new <a href="http://abud.me/" target="_blank">website</a>, <a href="http://abud.me/">http://abud.me</a>. This website will serve as my Michigan Teacher of the Year hub for the coming year and will be the <a href="http://abud.me/?page_id=20" target="_blank">new home for blog posts</a>, resources, and up-to-date information about my work in Michigan education. The new website will provide me more breathing room for housing all my content in one place. I will have resources for education, blog posts, media related to my classroom and presentations, books I'm reading and have written, as well as a place to contact me directly or request staff development, speaking engagements, or presentations for your organization or school.<br />
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While I have loved my time with Blogger and Google Sites, it's time to consolidate and have everything in one place for me. Thanks for following this blog all these years, and for your support of best practices in teaching and learning.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4kmR-UBwh6LGOBkC5CcklWSkFjVnup7WJ6E4bdufB8Rw71rkFVUmHPLfseoftcxkcd0tvsozz6K2kH2CRmQz_73jH1hcitvkq4VwYRUacIFl5kxxHVfSnzIhSIJLAs7WvD-N0u2DTtBc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-07-24+at+1.37.15+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="128" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4kmR-UBwh6LGOBkC5CcklWSkFjVnup7WJ6E4bdufB8Rw71rkFVUmHPLfseoftcxkcd0tvsozz6K2kH2CRmQz_73jH1hcitvkq4VwYRUacIFl5kxxHVfSnzIhSIJLAs7WvD-N0u2DTtBc/s320/Screen+Shot+2013-07-24+at+1.37.15+PM.png" width="320" /></a>This blog will remain available, but will no longer house my latest posts. It will be a legacy blog, and serve as an archive. You can proceed to the blog page on my <a href="http://abud.me/" target="_blank">new website</a> to subscribe and follow my <a href="http://abud.me/?page_id=20" target="_blank">latest posts</a> about classroom teaching, educational technology, or my time as Michigan Teacher of the Year.<br />
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Again, thanks for following, reading, and supporting. Wish me luck as I try my hand at web design from scratch and kicking off the blogging training wheels!<br />
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Have a great rest of your summer and an awesome start to the school year!!<br />
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~Gary</div>
Mr. Abudhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14646164735586747785noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-10527696165107340452013-06-09T23:59:00.004-04:002013-07-06T09:06:05.632-04:00Reflections On Performance Pay For Michigan Teachers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since the passing of <a href="http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(sg1pdr45lu4wdu554so0fmaw))/mileg.aspx?page=GetObject&objectname=2013-HB-4625" target="_blank">House Bill 4625</a>, it has been brought to my attention by <a href="http://www.mackinac.org/bio.aspx?ID=597" target="_blank">Tom Gantert</a> at the <a href="http://mackinac.org/" target="_blank">Mackinac Center</a> that the <a href="http://www.freep.com/article/20130523/NEWS02/305230095/Abud-Grosse-Pointe-North-teacher-of-the-year" target="_blank">Michigan Teacher of the Year</a> earns a salary that ranks less than nearly 80% of the other teachers in the same district and that this is based primarily on years of experience or educational degrees earned. The <a href="http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/18718" target="_blank">Michigan Capitol Confidential article</a> inspired in me some serious reflection on how teachers are compensated and whether a better model could loom in the midst of new legislation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though some teachers' work is in a different specialty area than science, my area of expertise, we are all working for students first and foremost. I am privileged to work with other award-winning, nationally and state recognized teachers in <a href="http://gpschools.org/" target="_blank">Grosse Pointe</a>, all of whom have the best interest of students at heart, and many of whom have mentored me to become an exceptional teacher. There are many outstanding teachers in this state, and more needs to be done to keep them in the profession for the best interest of our students. In Grosse Pointe, I feel exceptionally supported as an educator and provided with some of the best opportunities to develop as a professional and hone my talents. Not all teachers are privileged to work in schools where they attract and grow top talent. Often, the lack of support and development for teachers is a strong turn-off to educators entering the profession. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Teacher attrition is at an alarming fraction in our state, especially among newer teachers, and that is unacceptable; however, extrinsic motivators such as compensation are not the only way to keep great teachers in the field. It is not what goes into a teacher's wallet, but what comes from their heart, that guides their decisions about classroom practice. Excellent teaching is something that has to first come from the heart, and the heart must be supported in order to thrive. Supporting teachers in a variety of ways, including compensation, will contribute to reducing the attrition in the profession and keeping the top talent in front of our students. Blows to the hearts of teachers, such as negative public rhetoric directed toward Michigan teachers will propagate a seemingly hostile professional environment that discourages the best and brightest from entering and remaining in the field.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My heart, like the hearts of many educators, drives me to implement innovative teaching methodologies and best practice approaches to working with a wide range of student learning needs. These learning needs go well beyond that of content knowledge facts, which can be searched easily online in the digital era. What I provide for my students each day is a learning experience that goes beyond mere information about science to the application of science knowledge to career world situations, such as engineering projects, digital collaboration, and design thinking. What has earned me state-level recognition is more than having high test scores, it is providing a stellar learning experience that develops students into career-ready young adults who can communicate, collaborate, create, and critically think. My own professional practice has been heavily influenced by what I learn from other educators, mentors, advanced training, and conferences, but importantly it has also taken time and experience for me to hone my talents. Additionally, working in the medical research field prior to entering the teaching profession introduced me to some of the career skills that need be infused into classrooms, but are not explicitly part of our state's curriculum. I have had the support to integrate career skills into my classroom so I can strive to make a robust learning experience for my students where they learn by doing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While I understand that the current model on which salaries are determined for teachers in public schools has relied heavily on experience and completion of higher education, this model does not accurately reflect, without more information on actual classroom practice included, the complete picture of effective teaching practice. Effective teaching practice resembles effectiveness in other professions, such as medicine, art, music, and journalism. We know that a journalist with more experience covering complex issues will likely have a more sophisticated voice when they write in a story, but that does not mean that a less experienced journalist cannot emulate the same practices as their experienced counterpart to achieve high quality writing in their work. Standards and best practice guidelines exist for many professions, including medicine, news media, and education. The best practices in education need to be modeled by veteran teachers for new teachers and required of all in the profession.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although I recognize that, with experience, all professionals can improve in their field, I do not believe that seniority or advanced degrees are the only factors that should be considered in determining a teacher's effectiveness and compensation. Performance pay could have a place in education if it is not conflated with incentive pay or used as an 'if-then' extrinsic motivator. Incentive pay goes against the conclusions of behavioral science when it comes to cognitive work like that of teaching, medicine, or journalism, (Pink, 2011). Furthermore, a Springer, et. al. (2011) study of incentive pay for teachers found teacher incentives had little effect on student achievement. Performance-based compensation is not the same as incentive pay nor commission, and this distinction should be made very clear to all Michiganders, because compensation-driven decisions are not what is best for Michigan's students.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite some common misconceptions that districts are clinging to traditional seniority-based models for compensation, consideration of incorporating teacher performance is happening in schools across Michigan. Michiganders know that major paradigm shifts happen gradually, and the shift in education to focus on performance is taking place. As you know, recent legislative changes precluding seniority from being a significant factor in staffing decisions for teaching positions has influenced classrooms to be staffed for the best interest of students. This is an important milestone and is evidence that the conversation embracing performance over seniority has begun. As long as local school districts are given the control to make decisions about the performance evaluation model that best serves their students ability to grow and achieve, then you should see this conversation continue around the state. The recent passing of House Bill No. 4625 is going to continue moving the conversation along as well.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With regard to House Bill No. 4625, the language of the bill outlines a <i>change </i>in the framework for compensation models, specifically that they should "[include] job performance and job accomplishments as a <b>PRIMARY</b> factor" and performance should be, "at least in part based upon data on student growth as measured by assessments." The current language of the schools code is nearly identical, except that the performance and job accomplishments are (currently) "a <b>SIGNIFICANT </b>factor." This subtle, yet monumental, change according to the language of the bill, as is written, still does not seem to endorse any particular assessment, but rather "objective criteria," as the yard stick of student growth. The bill also would make it so that years of service and certain advanced degrees (non-subject area specific degrees) could not be included in the determination of compensation. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The bill also emphasizes using a fair system. Key to making performance pay serve the best interest of students across our state, a compensation model will need to be fair. To maintain the integrity of the term "fair" (line 8) of House Bill No. 4625, it will be critical that two things occur:</span><br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Educators are part of the conversation of developing models at the local level to implement performance compensation</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The performance compensation models should not have to be identical for all districts, because students achieve growth in a variety of ways that match their learning needs</span></li>
</ol>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With further regard to advancing the conversation surrounding performance pay, it should also be noted that:</span></div>
<ul>
<li style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(upavmm45x0umggje0r2fkr45))/documents/mcl/pdf/mcl-380-1250.pdf" target="_blank">Michigan School Code Sec. 1250</a>, which is locally determined, already included performance pay language similar to <span style="background-color: transparent;">House Bill No. 4625</span>. This was part of the "Race to the Top" legislation passed in December 2009, signed by Gov. Granholm in January 2010. </span></li>
<li style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The tenure reforms signed into law by Gov. Snyder in July 2011 make performance pay a prohibited subject of collective bargaining by teacher unions.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ultimately, effective teaching should be evaluated and compensated using a multifaceted approach determined at the local level with educators at the decision-making table. Though professional experience and level of education can contribute to the effectiveness of classroom teaching, these should only be part of the whole teacher compensation picture; instead, a comprehensive model that includes implementation of best teaching practices, professional accomplishments, continuing professional development, teacher leadership, contributions to the student learning experience, and student growth on assessments should be developed to utilize in schools.</span></div>
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Mr. Abudhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14646164735586747785noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-81043628601661111752013-04-19T20:32:00.002-04:002013-04-19T20:33:00.914-04:00ConnectedEDU Conference Learn By Doing Session on BYOD<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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At the inaugural <a href="http://connectingeducators.weebly.com/connected-educator-unconference.html" target="_blank">ConnectedEDU Un/Conference</a>, a team of teachers from around the state of Michigan will be presenting on something powerful from their classroom instruction toolbox. Each teacher had their classroom featured as part of the <a href="http://www.remc.org/" target="_blank">REMC</a> of Michigan's <a href="http://www.remc.org/projects/connectededucator/" target="_blank">Connected Educator Series Project</a>. My classroom was <a href="http://www.mistreamnet.com/vidflv.php?who=milearn.byod.032013" target="_blank">featured in this series</a> because of our <a href="http://grossepointe.patch.com/articles/grosse-pointe-north-students-give-technology-presentation-in-lansing" target="_blank">use of mobile devices</a> in the classroom. We run a <a href="http://abud.me/?p=24" target="_blank">Bring Your Own Device classroom</a>, where students can participate with classroom activities using any device they choose. I have written about how <a href="http://sagaeducators.org/2013/01/04/bring-your-own-device-byod-technology-policies-need-a-closer-look/" target="_blank">this topic deserves more attention and consideration</a> before, and <a href="http://j.mp/msts2012" target="_blank">my students have presented at the state capitol to legislators about the topic</a> on our school's behalf as well.<br />
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Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD/BYOT, initiatives come in many forms, and have gained a lot of support recently, and I personally am looking forward to see where this movement goes in the coming years. The hands-on work session I will be doing at the conference focuses on 5 ways to incorporate mobile devices into your classroom.<br />
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These include:<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Facilitating class discussions</li>
<li>Creating digital notes and notebooks</li>
<li>Interacting with instruction</li>
<li>Digital collaboration</li>
<li>Assessment</li>
</ol>
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For more information, check out the full presentation <a href="http://j.mp/2013byod" target="_blank">slide deck</a>. Enjoy!</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0" height="389" mozallowfullscreen="true" src="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/14bGLYcngL9pKe3NAsHUyuULFEy8oiLjIFdewB43O70U/embed?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000" webkitallowfullscreen="true" width="480"></iframe></div>
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Mr. Abudhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14646164735586747785noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-50487072322620143772013-03-20T11:09:00.002-04:002013-03-20T11:09:55.067-04:00Using iPads in the High School Science Classroom<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Using the iPad in High School Science</span></h2>
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When I first got an iPad back in 2011, I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with it; however, I knew that it had potential. Within a few months, I began to find uses for it that helped my teaching and student learning. It took nearly 6 months for it to fully integrate into my classroom teaching workflow, but I now realize that I could never go back to anything less. There are a number of great things about other classroom technologies, as well, and I'm not saying that the iPad is the best for everyone, but there sure is <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1YLkV42BQoSNO8xFNHEJCDAZ31myIO6nDXACweh8qVdI/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000" target="_blank">a lot of compelling evidence</a> that suggests it might be.</div>
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Here are my top 50 uses for the iPad, as a teacher, from my first year using it to teach high school physics and chemistry. This list was compiled in 2012, after exactly one year of using the iPad in my classes to teach. Some of these uses are apps, many of them are free, and others are functions of the stock iPad system or built-in device actions. This post will soon be updated for 2013 to a version 2.0, but in the meantime, there are many great ideas for teachers who have an iPad to use with their classes. </div>
<span style="font-family: Wingdings;"><div style="text-align: left;">
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o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Bracket Maker App</b> - to run and keep track of mousetrap car race tournaments<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Touch Sounds and Tone Generator</b> - to create different tones and waveforms of
varying frequencies to display using the laser or Ruben's Tube visualization<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>SoundCloud, Meta DJ and Wave Pad</b> - to show how waveforms graph the sound waves over
time, and how waveforms are used in music production to visually cue the
different sections of a song<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Meta DJ and GarageBand</b> - to teach students about frequency modulation and
effects production in music as it relates to modifying the equation for the
sound waveform<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Camera and Photo Booth</b> - to capture images and video from class to then
post on Google+, Twitter, display on the board over AirPlay on the Apple TV, or
to share using other applications<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Camera</b>
- to function as a mobile document camera or live feed camera to show what is
happening in a lab experiment or demo on one side of the room to students on
the other side of the room using AirPlay<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>CloudOn</b> - to manage, access and edit documents in a DropBox account using the
Microsoft Office suite controls --> to edit and manage the standards based
grading spreadsheet gradebook<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Numbers</b> - to collect data on student performance, completion of tasks, field
trip payments and permission slips --> allows for a star rating to collect
data easily; spreadsheet can then be exported via email to merge with data
master gradebook spreadsheet<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Paperport Notes</b> - to write notes and create answer keys for in class use live over
AirPlay or to export directly to Google Docs where class files are stored
--> can open and edit a PDF document, uses graphing, lined, or blank paper<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Tuning Fork</b> - used to teach about musical pitch and frequency of sound waves as
well as to demonstrate the concept of beats<br /> <o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Evernote & Evernote Peek</b> - to create a Smart Cover flip quiz for chemistry
vocabulary terms<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Splashtop Remote Desktop</b> - to remotely control my MacBook (before I had an
Apple TV) to use the iPad as an Airliner for the Smart Notebook software as
well as control web apps such as physics simulations<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>iMotion HD</b> - to make stop animation videos of things that happened in the lab or
in class (kind of for fun) and to post them on Google+ or Twitter<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Cinemagram</b> - to make cool GIFs of things that happened in class and to post them
on Google+ or Twitter<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Protractor</b> - to measure angles in experiments, particularly ones done outside,
e.g., rocket launching or banked turning angle of lean<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Video Physics </b>- app for capturing video footage of objects in motion and analyzing
their motion for its speed, direction, acceleration, and path<br /><b><o:p></o:p></b><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>SimplePhysics </b>- a challenging problem-solving game for students to use their
knowledge of various physics concepts to accomplish a building task, such as
constructing a roof, staircase, or treefort, which has to accomplish a certain
task (such as support a load of weight.)<br /><b><o:p></o:p></b><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Mr. AaaaHh! & Angry Birds </b>- an app for teaching about projectile motion and
calculating acceleration due to gravity in a video game world<br /><b><o:p></o:p></b><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Underground Basketball </b>- a fun game to challenge students' knowledge of
projectiles and motion in two dimensions. Students have to make baskets by
changing the angle of trajectory for shooting a basketball<br /> <b><o:p></o:p></b><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Newton's Cradle </b>- an interactive app that shows the conservation of momentum and
transfer of energy in the Newton's Cradle toy<br /><b><o:p></o:p></b><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Refractive </b>- an app for calculating the angle of refraction and visualizing the
refraction of light<br /><b><o:p></o:p></b><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Quick Graph </b>- graphing functions to help students visualize relationships in their
data from lab experiments<br /><b><o:p></o:p></b><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Calculator </b>- calculations for lab data<br /><b><o:p></o:p></b><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>GoSkyWatch and Planetary - </b>uses the movement of the iPad to match up to the
star map and information on constellations in the app to view the stars that
the iPad is facing. Planetary takes your music library and translates it into
an outer space analogy display. Used to help students to think about the motion
of the heavenly bodies.<br /> <b><o:p></o:p></b><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Skype, Google+ Hangout, and FaceTime </b>- video chatting in real time for 1 on 1 or
up to 20 persons (G+ only) -- used to allow absent students to view class,
students communicate with project groups when they cannot arrange face to face
meetings. Send students to collect lab data outside the classroom and report
back to students in real time with lab partners in the classroom, or project on
screen with Apple TV (like a roaming camera)<br /><b><o:p></o:p></b><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>TourWrist </b>- 3D virtual tours of panoramic views from around the world<br /><b><o:p></o:p></b><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Stick Pick </b>- randomly select students to ask questions of in class; generates
prompts for questions based on Bloom's taxonomy and keeps track of teacher
ratings of students' responses.<br /><b><o:p></o:p></b><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>iReview</b> - to make flashcards and quizzes out of Quizlet flashcard sets<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>ShowMe</b>
- to create narrated whiteboard-style videos of explanations of homework or of
class concepts. The videos get posted on the ShowMe website and shared via
Google+ or Twitter<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Foursquare</b> (with the mobile hotspot) - to run and manage a scavenger at Cedar
Point<br /> <o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Socrative </b>- polling and quizzing application for audience (student) responses
using devices or any web browser. Students can vote on surveys or polls, answer
quiz questions, share ideas/hypotheses, or take a graded quiz. Works on any web
browser and also has mobile device based apps (teacher version and student
version)<br /><b><o:p></o:p></b><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Skyfire and Puffin - </b>web browsers that make web browsing more fully
functional, e.g., to show flash animations, SlideRocket presentations from
students, interactive applets, or embedded videos from a website. Also, to show
YouTube videos that would be blocked on the school wireless, because YouTube is
blocked on the school wireless entirely<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Music</b>
- to power the Ruben's tube, laser for music visualization; to power styrofoam
plate speakers made by students in class.<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Web-Browser</b> (Safari) - take attendance, reference information online<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Lino</b>
- an app for creating bulletin boards and sticky notes that can be
collaboratively written on. Teacher can create a prompt and students can post
sticky notes responding to the prompt. Students can take photos of something
from their lab experiment and post the photo on the board. Accessible from the
web or device apps. Saveable boards can be published. Can use like a display
board for student work.<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>DropBox + iBooks</b> - storing, viewing and sharing documents from a scavenger hunt<br /><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Wingdings;">o<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b>SyncSpace</b> - students can collaboratively create a whiteboard to then display
using the Apple TV AirPlay<br /><o:p></o:p><br />
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Mr. Abudhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14646164735586747785noreply@blogger.com49tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-18100790661204492152013-03-15T19:19:00.000-04:002013-03-20T11:14:07.894-04:00A Look Into a 'Bring Your Own Device' (BYOD) Classroom<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Students using their own device in the classroom? It sure is!</div>
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Recently, I discovered that I am part of some "73% of teachers," according to <a href="http://mashable.com/2013/02/28/teachers-technology/">an article published by Mashable</a>, who are using cell phones in the classroom with students for learning activities. Leveraging mobile devices for learning is nothing new, and many classrooms have invested in 1:1 device initiatives, such as iPads, for students. Despite its apparent benefits, this can be costly and not always the most beneficial route. Though the jury is still out on <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/edtechresearcher/2013/02/mit_students_on_ipads_in_the_classroom.html">iPads for every student in the classroom</a>, a much more accessible alternative exists--allow students to use the devices they already have. Of course, this approach is not going to look the same everywhere, nor at each grade level, yet it is <a href="http://sagaeducators.org/2013/01/04/bring-your-own-device-byod-technology-policies-need-a-closer-look/" target="_blank">still one worth exploring</a>. <br />
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Many students are walking into classrooms each day with mobile technology, and often that technology is more powerful than the technology available to them at school. The potential for using devices in learning to collaborate, communicate, and create content is endless; however, policies currently in place in many schools make it challenging to allow teachers to explore device use in classrooms. Nonetheless, there are many <a href="http://sagaeducators.org/2013/01/04/bring-your-own-device-byod-technology-policies-need-a-closer-look/">aspects of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)</a> that can inspire schools get started in considering policy changes that would allow device use for learning. What is the potential for BYOD in the classroom? Seemingly, the possibilities are endless. The <a href="http://www.remc.org/" target="_blank">REMC Association of Michigan</a> put on a showcase video, entitled the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/ConnectedEduSeries" target="_blank">Connected Educator Series</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy8MJ-S59Jw" target="_blank">featuring the BYOD teaching and learning</a> that takes place in my classroom this year.<br />
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Students can engage in what is referred to as <a href="http://www.p21.org/overview">21st century learning</a>, <a href="http://sagaeducators.org/2013/02/01/10-steps-to-your-best-new-classroom-workflow-penultimate-evernote/">create digital notes or portfolios</a>, collaborate in real-time, <a href="http://sagaeducators.org/2013/01/04/get-your-students-blogging-in-2013/">journal and reflect on their own learning</a>, or participate in<a href="http://sagaeducators.org/2013/02/18/where-does-blended-learning-fit/"> blended learning</a> opportunities. In my own classroom, we use devices for so many different aspects of science class, that it has rendered us nearly paperless. The basics of a BYOD policy for students should be not all that different than a policy for employees and adults in the workplace or higher education. To introduce some of the basic elements of BYOD, <a href="http://www.onlinecolleges.net/">OnlineColleges.net</a> put together this infographic illustrating what it is and some ideas for use. Getting a sense of the BYOD realm is the first step toward considering how it can function in your classroom.</div>
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<a href="http://www.onlinecolleges.net/2012/08/06/going-byod/" style="font-size: 1rem; line-height: 1.714285714;"><img alt="Going BYOD" border="0" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/infographics/Going-BYOD-800.png" width="500" /></a></div>
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Mr. Abudhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14646164735586747785noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-83702406407339101322013-01-01T17:34:00.005-05:002013-01-01T17:35:14.815-05:00What Exactly Is Standards Based Education?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCmAkuwO8yUT4-IEYSI2EXcDkdeWwYYpUQijY5tNNHnB4oPo1Ol3E6XWE31NOMo3c7RiWDdSnYLGekHcxKFE2sATk_YZaeoIKmhQeWcPaJLrSJvG6EV1Wbjdc4vgb12TeMuJC-os7U9quV/s1600/NCLB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCmAkuwO8yUT4-IEYSI2EXcDkdeWwYYpUQijY5tNNHnB4oPo1Ol3E6XWE31NOMo3c7RiWDdSnYLGekHcxKFE2sATk_YZaeoIKmhQeWcPaJLrSJvG6EV1Wbjdc4vgb12TeMuJC-os7U9quV/s1600/NCLB.jpg" height="304" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When students, parents, and educators alike hear the word "standardized" most think of a fill-in-the-ovals multiple-choice test that is viewed as a judgement of a student's academic worth. Though standardized tests have become a staple of U.S. education, they are neither the end, nor the means, of standards in education. The education reform of the past twenty years in the U.S. has sought not to implement standardized tests, but to ensure a standard education is accessible to all students everywhere. A standard, such as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard" target="_blank">gold standard</a> in currency, is merely a frame of reference for comparison. It is an established norm against which other things of similar form can be equitably compared. In the case of currency, paper money was manufactured and could hold any denomination of the maker's choosing; however, comparing currency to a designated amount of gold ensured that a similar amount of paper or coin would always be the same no matter where it was tendered. For education, a set of curriculum standards assures that students are learning the same content in the same way, but necessarily with the same lessons. The idea is to ensure students all achieve the same academic end from their education independent of the instructional means. M</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ore simply, standards-based education is an agreed upon doctrine of what to teach and not how to teach. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The idea of standards in education is nothing new. The
Society of Jesus, e.g., the Jesuits, back in the late 16</span><sup style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century
created a document called the </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratio_Studiorum" target="_blank">RatioStudiorum</a>. T</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">hat document served as a set of standards that defined what teaching
and learning would look like at all of their Jesuit schools around the world.
Montessori schools followed a similar effort in standardizing education in the
late 19</span><sup style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century. The purpose of standards for the Jesuits and Montessori
was, and is still to this day for all standards-based schools, to ensure that
all students are getting a similar educational experience in what they are
taught.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />U.S.
schools began to undergo widespread standardization in the 1990s an effort to
respond to a 1980s report that the U.S. schools were falling behind those of
other countries. This process underwent three major iterations: <i>America 2000</i> (George H. W. Bush
administration,) <i>Goals 2000</i> (Bill
Clinton administration,) and in 2001 the most recent <i>No Child Left Behind Act</i> (<a href="http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/index.html" target="_blank">NCLB</a>) of George W. Bush’s administration
was adopted. Following from inspiration overseas in France and Great Britain,
the U.S. NCLB Act sought to ensure that all students were receiving a high
quality education in public schools by highly qualified teachers. School
performance would be measured on students’ success on standardized tests, and
the results of student testing would be reported to serve as basis for school
improvement. Ultimately, the nature of the NCLB Act, and standards-based
education in general, is well intentioned and seeks to provide all students a
great education.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />The
education reform of the standards-based movement in the U.S. seeks to provide
more detailed feedback on student, teacher, and school performance to all the
stakeholders. This can better inform decision-making practices from all areas
of a school district and community. Additionally, at a larger scale, regional,
state, and national results from performance with standardized education can be
used to inform policy and funding decisions. All around, the intention of
standards-based education seeks to provide more information to help everyone
involved in students’ education to do the best that they can. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An approach to instruction, assessment and grading known as the standards-based learning approach can help all parties involved in a student's education achieve success. By outlining what the learning objectives are for students, e.g., standards, and designing instruction to help students reach those learning outcomes, students can be guaranteed to get a standard education anywhere. Traditional grading, however, does not provide quite the right amount of feedback for students, parents, and teachers about a student's performance with those content standards. When you think of a grade of "C," "B+" or "A," it may mean different things in different places to different individuals. This necessitates an assessment system that directly measures student performance with the learning objectives, but also a grading schema that gives more detailed feedback about the level of mastery a student has achieved with the content. In this way, external behaviors and any non-assessments of learning are removed from the grade, thus a student's grade in a standards-based system can more accurately reflect what they know.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Just as schools need more detailed
feedback on their students’ performance to improve their teaching practice,
students at the classroom or individual level need more detailed information on
their own performance to improve their learning. Standards-based assessment and
reporting is a reliable and effective means of obtaining and communicating
meaningful feedback about student learning. It helps to keep students focused
on learning and makes their own learning more transparent, accessible and
attainable. With the right feedback, students can be empowered, just as
educators are by data, to self-reflect, change and improve. Ultimately,
implementing a standards-based approach at the classroom level can positively
impact schools in a trickle-up manner. Students begin to connect what they
learn with success and not merely what they do. This leads students to become
better self-advocates, develop a growth mindset toward their own education, and
work with educators to be more successful.</span></div>
</div>
Gary G. Abud, Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10082000053180484544noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-66613722228305943612012-11-29T20:14:00.006-05:002012-11-29T20:46:26.154-05:00Getting Started With Modeling Instruction in Chemistry<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaP9EboihUgiFPsWGLgovLWzLVOoojU93guvm1gWTareGyy7j8OOLrNBJd6yHSj364cpYv5vKGaEv_Oqb-gmXa5C0XEmdN9yhvwSr8b2pevhvc_9y6azWdtJRRuf_ZunVB2Z8I3wL6Ir4/s1600/Photo+Sep+13,+2+36+52+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaP9EboihUgiFPsWGLgovLWzLVOoojU93guvm1gWTareGyy7j8OOLrNBJd6yHSj364cpYv5vKGaEv_Oqb-gmXa5C0XEmdN9yhvwSr8b2pevhvc_9y6azWdtJRRuf_ZunVB2Z8I3wL6Ir4/s1600/Photo+Sep+13,+2+36+52+PM.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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Four years ago, I was introduced to the <a href="http://modelinginstruction.org/" target="_blank">Modeling Method</a> for teaching physics at Arizona State University. It instantly clicked with my constructivist philosophy of teaching & learning. It helped make me an excellent physics teacher who challenged students to think more than ever and taught science by doing science. Last year, I had the opportunity to travel to Pennsylvania to train in the Modeling Method for teaching chemistry. Another influential experience, this program transformed my chemistry instruction and helped align my teaching philosophy and pedagogy with both of the science disciplines that I teach. </div>
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In my experience with teaching using the Modeling Method, I have had tremendous success making learning of science accessible, engaging and challenging to all levels of high school students. This post is a resource for anyone interested in the Modeling Instruction in Chemistry program. The training is done over a three-week period of 15 full-day course meetings. A total of over 100 hours of contact time wherein the participants in the training will go through all of the curriculum in the role of the student and debrief and discuss the underpinnings of it all as teachers. </div>
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Modeling instruction is a constructivist pedagogy for teaching science using <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/1cb5lqmlunx5vor/minimizing_resistance.pdf" target="_blank">inquiry-based methods</a>. Though it could be translated to other disciplines, it is a framework for teaching wherein learning takes place through the focused development and deployment of conceptual models. The models are constructed by the students themselves through the active experiences of interacting with the the content in a physical context. The teacher's role is to guide students and cultivate their learning with them. Multiple representations of the developed models are a mainstay of this approach.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="356" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/15418427" style="border-width: 1px 1px 0; border: 1px solid #CCC; margin-bottom: 5px;" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" width="427"> </iframe> </div>
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The curriculum design for Modeling Instruction in Chemistry was influenced by the <a href="http://lhs01.lhs.berkeley.edu/a/CHEM_Study" target="_blank">CHEM-Study</a> approach which first appeared in the early 1960s. This approach to chemistry instruction makes the particle models used to describe matter and the treatment of the role of energy in change more explicit. The three essential questions that guide this approach to chemistry teaching & learning are:</div>
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<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="color: #990000;">How do we view matter? (Answer in terms of the particle you are using to describe matter)</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #990000;">How does matter behave? (Provide an explanation of the behavior using this particle model)</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #990000;">What is the role of energy in the changes we observe?</span></li>
</ol>
The curriculum framework for Modeling Instruction in Chemistry is comprised of nine essential units, each of which contributes additional features to the ever-developing model of matter. It follows a generally historical perspective of the development of the body of knowledge in chemistry that exists today, and it makes the structure of the discipline far more explicit than any other conventional approach to teaching chemistry. The nine units are highlighted below along with a more detailed entry about the units in the context of the three-week training.<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/fzstpd37td4yzbi/3-Modeling%20Chemistry___Big%20Ideas-v2.pdf" target="_blank">The "Big Ideas" of the Modeling Instruction in Chemistry Curriculum Framework (Units 1-9)</a></h3>
<b>Unit 1 - Physical Properties of Matter</b><br />
<i>Matter is composed of featureless spheres (particles) which have mass and volume. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<b>Unit 2 - Energy & States of Matter (Part I)</b><br />
<i>The particles are in constant, random, thermal motion.</i><br />
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<b>Unit 3 - </b><b>Energy & States of Matter (Part II)</b><br />
<i>Energy is a conserved substance-like quantity that is stored in various accounts and transferred in various ways.</i><br />
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<b>Unit 4 - Describing Substances, Mixtures and Compounds</b><br />
<i>The particles that make up substances can be compounded from smaller particles. </i><br />
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<b>Unit 5 - Counting Particles Too Small to See</b><br />
<i>Using Avogadro’s Hypothesis we are able to determine the number of molecules in macroscopic samples by weighing them.</i><br />
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<b>Unit 6 - Particles Having Internal Structure</b><br />
<i>We find that atoms have the property of charge and some internal structure</i><br />
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<b>Unit 7 - Chemical Reactions: Particles and Energy</b><br />
<i>Chemical reactions involve the rearrangement of atoms in molecules to form new molecules.</i><br />
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<b>Unit 8 - Stoichiometry</b><br />
<i>Equations representing chemical reactions relate numbers of particles (molecules or formula units) to weighable amounts of these particles.</i><br />
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<b>Unit 9 - Applications of Stoichiometry</b><br />
<i>Equations representing chemical reactions can also relate numbers of particles (molecules or formula units) to volumes of gases, solutions and to the change in chemical potential energy.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
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<h3 style="text-align: center;">
The entire Modeling Chemistry Workshop was documented and chronicled during summer 2012 in a series of 18 posts, each of which focuses on topics from one or more of the units of study:</h3>
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<h4>
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<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2011/08/what-teachers-can-learn-from-karate-kid.html" style="font-weight: normal;" target="_blank">Primer: Constructivist Teaching</a></li>
</ul>
</h4>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/07/experience-with-modeling-insruction.html" target="_blank">Overview of Workshop</a></li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/07/modchem-day-1.html" target="_blank">Day 1 - Intro & Unit 1</a></li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/07/modchem-day-2.html" target="_blank">Day 2 - Unit 1 cont.</a></li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/07/modchem-day-3.html" target="_blank">Day 3 - Unit 1 + Unit 2</a></li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/07/modchem-day-4.html" target="_blank">Day 4 - Unit 2</a></li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/07/modchem-day-5.html" target="_blank">Day 5 - Unit 2</a></li>
</ul>
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<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/07/modchem-day-6.html" target="_blank">Day 6 - Unit 3</a></li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/07/modchem-day-7.html" target="_blank">Day 7 - Unit 3 + Unit 4</a></li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/07/modchem-day-8.html" target="_blank">Day 8 - Unit 4</a></li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/07/modchem-day-9-part-1-whiteboarding-and.html" target="_blank">Day 9 (Part 1) - Unit 5</a></li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/07/modchem-day-9-part-2-development-of.html" target="_blank">Day 9 (Part 2) - Unit 6</a></li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/07/modchem-day-10.html" target="_blank">Day 10 - Unit 6</a></li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/07/modchem-day-11.html" target="_blank">Day 11 - Unit 7</a></li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/07/modchem-day-12.html" target="_blank">Day 12 - Unit 7</a></li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/07/modchem-day-13.html" target="_blank">Day 13 - Unit 8</a></li>
</ul>
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<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/08/modchem-day-14.html" target="_blank">Day 14 - Unit 9</a></li>
</ul>
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<li><a href="http://blog.abud.me/2012/08/modchem-day-15.html" target="_blank">Day 15 - Unit 9 & Close</a></li>
</ul>
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Mr. Abudhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14646164735586747785noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-50594600490945159012012-11-18T11:46:00.000-05:002013-01-04T16:54:02.270-05:00Ten Digital Ideas to Consider at Your School This Week<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6X-h4ymACVu7qhfmAYQihqE7SLV4S5_QX1Of8FkvTHabo0W1WynSQiui4h-4GpYWGr6eEe3j67NLaSLM2orJZxx1QkLCxp7cqrB4-zch7SNkiM_W9-BXRJDcqpvPsqRYD5hBcqE-9eZqc/s1600/mdlc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6X-h4ymACVu7qhfmAYQihqE7SLV4S5_QX1Of8FkvTHabo0W1WynSQiui4h-4GpYWGr6eEe3j67NLaSLM2orJZxx1QkLCxp7cqrB4-zch7SNkiM_W9-BXRJDcqpvPsqRYD5hBcqE-9eZqc/s1600/mdlc.jpg" height="106" width="320" /></a></div>
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This past week was the 2012 <a href="http://michigandlc.weebly.com/" target="_blank">Michigan Digital Learning Conference</a> hosted by the <a href="http://macul.org/" target="_blank">MACUL</a> organization. The conference brings together Michigan educators and technology professionals to share ideas on what the latest and greatest in technology could mean for education. There were presentations by classroom teachers, administrators, tech "gurus" and technology vendors. The conference was an opportunity to learn new things, share and discuss ideas with others from around the state of Michigan, and to renew a sense of the role of technology in our lives. There was something for everyone to take away from the keynote, session presentations, and discussions. Whether you are in the field of education, or just want some great digital ideas to use in your personal or professional life, here are the top ideas that stood out at the conference.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">LeapMotion</span></b><br />
<a href="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQsp7fi41K1WIMFx5d25HZ1NoZWfwE6djZnIuS2c7nR-w649HKQ" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQsp7fi41K1WIMFx5d25HZ1NoZWfwE6djZnIuS2c7nR-w649HKQ" width="200" /></a>Keynote speaker <a href="http://www.lesliefisher.com/" target="_blank">Leslie Fisher</a> presented on day two of the conference and showcased a number of cool gadget tools and apps for iOS. <a href="http://www.geek.com/articles/games/leap-3d-a-70-motion-controller-accurate-to-0-01-mm-20120521/" target="_blank">LeapMotion</a>, an up-and-coming competitor to Microsoft's <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/" target="_blank">Kinect</a>, promises 0.01mm accuracy hands-free control of a device. The device will allow you to use gestures that are sensed by the LeapMotion device to control the functions of your computer, laptop, etc. Pretty amazing stuff. The <a href="http://youtu.be/_d6KuiuteIA" target="_blank">demo video</a> of the LeapMotion alone is enough to motivate an impulsive pre-order. For $70, this device can make you <a href="http://nypress.com/right-hemisphere-for-options-brain-controlled-computing-with-neurosky/" target="_blank">Tom Cruise in Minority Report</a>. Looking ahead to what this might mean for personal computing or the classroom, the ability to navigate control of a device without the need for hard-wired, or even wireless, controllers enhances the experience of using programs, such as maps, simulations, or photo editing. Think about how often people "talk with their hands" during a conversation. They try to help you understand what they are thinking more with their gestures. The LeapMotion may help to bridge the gap between thinking and communicating ones thinking a little more. In the classroom setting, tools to help narrow that gap are invaluable.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Augmented Reality (AR)</span></b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/5qRcIek4NY0?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
A new "visual browser" called <a href="http://www.aurasma.com/" target="_blank">Aurasma</a> allows you to create your own "auras" to overlay on images and text. This will allow another user scanning the image with their device camera using the app to automatically access your created content overlaid on the image. There are a <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/253530/top_15_augmented_reality_apps_for_iphone_and_ipad.html" target="_blank">number of AR apps</a> out there, many of which are either <a href="http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/augmented-reality-apps-for-education/" target="_blank">targeted for</a> or could be <a href="http://www.appolicious.com/education/articles/12777-appealing-apps-for-educators-augmented-reality-for-educational-engagement" target="_blank">repurposed</a> for education. The possibilities of creating content for a lesson or project are really promising. With AR technology, such as the Aurasma app, information could be overlaid on objects, experimental equipment, worksheets, projects, areas of a building, or even to generate hints for assignments and projects. Increasing device use in the classroom makes the future development and current availability of augmented reality apps very appealing to education.<br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;"><b>gClass Folders for Google Drive</b></span><br />
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Classrooms have already seen the value of and begun incorporating Google Apps into their student and teacher workflows. As a free alternative to pricey Learning Management Systems (LMS) and as a no-maintenance option instead of some of the open-source LMS out there, Google Apps can provide a very appealing digital classroom toolset. One of the cautions with Google Drive (f.k.a. Google Docs) has been a challenge to create a file distribution and collection system between teachers and students. Many of the LMS out there offer no-setup folder hierarchies with easy to use features for students and teachers across all classes. Although this can be done in Google Drive, it is not an intuitive or automated setup; and actually, the tediousness of creating all the folders with correct permissions for all students in all classes is a daunting task that few teachers would have time to do. That's where <a href="http://ncsedtechnews.blogspot.com/2012/10/gclass-folder-automated-sharing.html" target="_blank">gClass Folders</a> comes in for the win! It is a script built into a Google spreadsheet template that automatically creates file folders for a group of individuals based on your entered information in the spreadsheet. It automates the creation of a view only folder, editable folder, and turn-it-in style dropbox folder for each individual and then shares the folders with them.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Reflector App for iOS Mirroring on Mac or PC</span></b><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3YGUouN72QtUAsc4fs6meoXVI_TVj89FoD9ycdAe_UbZHTE3uI3Pw1TE3h-3wjXPvwSQOo_4B2UemSPHrEAwJZqwygRvsJRezpL4KDtnrR-vov-iywYsqapIeAoPz-5gcMBgQBba3AHw/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-03-16+at+1.22.44+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3YGUouN72QtUAsc4fs6meoXVI_TVj89FoD9ycdAe_UbZHTE3uI3Pw1TE3h-3wjXPvwSQOo_4B2UemSPHrEAwJZqwygRvsJRezpL4KDtnrR-vov-iywYsqapIeAoPz-5gcMBgQBba3AHw/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-03-16+at+1.22.44+PM.png" height="188" style="cursor: move;" width="200" /></a>With the popularity of the <a href="http://www.appletvhacks.net/2012/09/12/airplay-mirroring-supported-on-the-fifth-generation-ipod-touch/" target="_blank">AirPlay mirroring</a> features on newer iOS devices, many conference rooms and classrooms are equipped an <a href="http://www.apple.com/appletv/" target="_blank">Apple TV</a> to allow someone to show the display of their device on a larger display. Having an Apple TV connected to a projector will allow any device on the same wireless network to mirror its display and audio through the projector. A great feature for classrooms, the Apple TV can allow students and the teacher to share content wirelessly in the classroom for all to see. Some school wireless networks <a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/wireless/academia-to-apple-fix-your-airplay-wirel/240003500" target="_blank">do not play nicely with the Apple TV</a>, and this can be a brick-wall to classroom integration of the technology; however, a computer-based application called <a href="https://www.reflectionapp.com/" target="_blank">Reflector</a> (f.k.a. "Reflection") offers a viable alternative. The app, which retails for $15, allows a user to wirelessly mirror their iOS device display on the computer or laptop screen. If your laptop or desktop are connected to a projector and on the wireless network, then a device connection to allow for AirPlay mirroring is now at your disposal. One of the best features of the Reflector app is the ability to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_rZAtZlMsBU" target="_blank">display multiple devices simultaneously</a>, a great feature for comparing the ideas of multiple individuals in a classroom. The app also touts screen recording ability, which opens up the playing field for iOS device screencasting, an essential component to <a href="http://educatech.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/what-should-we-flip/" target="_blank">flipped classroom models</a>.<br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;"><b>iPads Trump Interactive Whiteboards</b></span></div>
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Though many classrooms and conference rooms are already equipped with interactive whiteboards and projectors, if there is a decision to be made about choosing new technology, perhaps the best choice isn't an interactive whiteboard. The actual interactive whiteboard device isn't much more evolved than a traditional whiteboard, or worse yet...a chalkboard; however, it does have some appealing features such as simulations, games, integration with student response systems, and lesson/assessment templates. Notwithstanding these software features, the actual hardware has many setbacks. Its one user at a time limitation and fixed position in a room requires a presenter to be tethered to the board (unless you have an <a href="http://smarttech.com/Solutions/Education+Solutions/Products+for+education/Complementary+hardware+products/SMART+Slate" target="_blank">Airliner</a>) and that blocks the view of the audience from any content being displayed. Yet an insightful presentation on <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/pub?id=1YLkV42BQoSNO8xFNHEJCDAZ31myIO6nDXACweh8qVdI&start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000" target="_blank">why you want an ipad instead of an interactive whiteboard</a>, revealed that the cost of an interactive whiteboard is far greater than an alternative setup that includes a projector, Apple TV (or computer running the <a href="https://www.reflectionapp.com/" target="_blank">Reflection</a> app) and an iPad. The iPad setup for a classroom has much more versatility and plenty of comparable features to outplay any interactive whiteboard, including that several iOS devices can interact with the setup and allow audience members to participate with their own device. With the untethered freedom, variety of apps available on iOS, and the ability to act as a roaming document camera as well, the iPad (over the interactive whiteboard) not only advances classroom technology but promotes collaboration instead of mere presentation. </div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;"><b>21Things4Students & the Digital Literacy Movement</b></span></div>
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We want to use all these great technologies, apps, and digital tools in classrooms with students. The hope is that these innovations will empower students and enhance teaching & learning. One major hurdle to use of technology in the classroom is the ability for students to engage with and successfully use all the tools at their disposal is that students may not know how to use the tools already. This sets up a need for training, and intensive training in some cases. The <a href="http://learning.instructure.com/2012/10/digital-natives-myth-or-fact/" target="_blank">theory of the digital native</a> posits that individuals born in the digital age have some intuitive and and inherent ability to use and learn technology that surpasses the ability of individuals born in earlier generations. This can sometimes leads to false assumptions in the classroom that students will easily figure out how to use digital tools and integrate them immediately into their learning experience. Without the proper training, students will struggle with technology just like anyone new to it. That's where a tremendous initiative to teach digital skills and standards of digital citizenship called <a href="http://www.21things4students.net/" target="_blank">21Things4Students</a> comes up huge. It is an organized curriculum for students, mostly focused at the middle school and junior high level, to teach them digital skills and introduce them to tools common in the digital learning realm. Students proceed through the curriculum as a course led by an instructor and completely delivered online. The experience takes students, at their own pace, through a variety of skills and guides them to create artifacts and generate a portfolio of their learning. The implications for such a curriculum is far-reaching and imperative to training students to be successful in navigating the digital world.</div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;"><b>Students Should Be Blogging</b></span></div>
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If 1) the pen is mightier than the sword; 2) writing is a blueprint of thinking; and 3) <a href="http://edudemic.com/2012/11/teach-students-about-social-media/" target="_blank">social media</a> can help change the world, then meaningful <a href="http://www.pernilleripp.com/2011/05/14-steps-to-meaningful-student-blogging.html" target="_blank">blogging</a> is the perfect tool to teach students written expression...and much more. The <a href="http://www.writinga-z.com/razwritingweb/research.do" target="_blank">connection</a> between writing skills, learning, and academic performance has motivated an emphasis in teaching writing across the content areas; however, there is no hard-and-fast approach to teach writing in each subject discipline. Often times, technical writing in each subject is the focus of teaching writing across the content areas; however, a reliable and consilient method of teaching writing could be to <a href="http://gettingsmart.com/cms/blog/2012/10/10-reasons-why-i-want-my-students-blog/" target="_blank">get students blogging</a>. There are many examples of student journaling throughout the history of classroom teaching at many different levels, but blogging provides an opportunity for not only <a href="http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/onlib/reflect.html" target="_blank">reflective writing and thinking</a>, but for communication, showcasing student learning, and making<a href="http://www.pz.harvard.edu/vt/visiblethinking_html_files/VisibleThinking1.html" target="_blank"> thinking visible</a>. Some great examples of student blogs exist at the <a href="http://www.mrswideen.com/2012/11/why-blog-with-6-and-7-year-olds.html" target="_blank">elementary</a>, <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/abudsci/chemistry/homework" target="_blank">secondary</a>, and <a href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0011.303?rgn=main;view=fulltext" target="_blank">post-secondary</a> levels of education, and they can be inspiring to see what students can do to create and share content and ideas. Even <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/10/20/twitter-students-writers/" target="_blank">micro-blogging</a> can be a successful opportunity for student writing. Overall, student writing is the focus, regardless of the medium, but blogging offers so much more than mere writing. Blogging could be that missing link that bridges a gap between thinking and expression to help students become more resourceful and successful learners.</div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;"><b>Mobile Applications Still Dominate the Scene</b></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.mobileapptesting.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/MobileAppWorld.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://www.mobileapptesting.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/MobileAppWorld.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a>What would we do without mobile applications? Probably not much. Although the devices we love, and sometimes love to hate, are sophisticated and advanced, it is genuinely the apps for the devices that give them their usability and mass appeal. After all, what would a front-facing camera be without video-calling apps? Many of the conference sessions, including the keynote addresses, highlighted some of the great (free) apps out there that have functionality in the classroom or in education in general. With literally billions of apps available for countless devices and platforms, finding the best apps can be an Attention-Deficit-Disorder-inducing nightmare. A career could be made out of scouring the app stores out there for the best applications, only to find out the next day that new ones have emerged that might be better, or just different. There are apps for teaching <a href="http://www.junauza.com/2012/10/best-science-apps-for-android.html" target="_blank">science</a>, <a href="http://eddigitaltribe.blogspot.com/2012/10/untitled.html" target="_blank">math</a>, <a href="http://www.avatargeneration.com/2012/11/top-8-apps-for-teaching-creative-writing/" target="_blank">writing</a>, <a href="http://www.midnightmusic.com.au/2011/11/my-top-7-ipad-apps-for-music-teachers/" target="_blank">music</a>, <a href="http://computer.howstuffworks.com/tablets/10-ipad-apps-for-teaching-kids-to-read.htm" target="_blank">reading</a>, <a href="http://www.avatargeneration.com/2012/11/7-best-apps-for-high-school-theatre-teachers/" target="_blank">fine arts</a>, <a href="http://www.freeclubweb.com/ipad/socialstudies/greekgods.html" target="_blank">social studies</a>, <a href="http://www.brighthubeducation.com/teaching-methods-tips/62720-free-apps-for-english-and-language-arts-teachers/" target="_blank">ELA</a>, <a href="http://newtrier.libguides.com/content.php?pid=181622&sid=1651735" target="_blank">art</a>, <a href="http://www.noodle.org/noodlings/tutoring/5-foreign-language-learning-apps-rock" target="_blank">foreign language</a>, <a href="http://edudemic.com/2012/02/special-ed-apps/" target="_blank">special education</a>, and <a href="http://thepegeek.com/2012/10/29/top-apps-for-pe-teachers-part-19/" target="_blank">physical education</a>; however, the common theme here is that apps can help any device do just about anything. Remember, it's not about the technology, but what you do with it, that is most important when it comes to education.</div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;"><b>Considerations Before Going 1:1</b></span></div>
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Talking to educators and other professionals from schools and districts around the state of Michigan, and likely around the country and world alike, you quickly discover that many places are looking into <a href="http://edudemic.com/2012/11/the-early-results-of-an-ipad-classroom-are-in/" target="_blank">one student-one device (1:1) initiatives</a> for the learning environment. There are many great models for a 1:1 classroom, or school, including computer labs, mobile devices, BYOD or even student laptops. Yet, many of these initiatives present as if the focus is on the technology and not the teaching & learning. One of the most impactful messages that was presented at this conference encouraged schools and classrooms, which are considering or have gone to 1:1 environments, to ensure that the focus is always on student learning outcomes. A <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/pub?id=1iOL8mhb7n_QLixmZ0mJGTuKhGnEtGn2fqorvMlfdjbs&start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000" target="_blank">5-E framework</a> was presented to guide decision-making for anyone considering 1:1. These five Es include: effective instructional practices, economics, equity, expectations, and evaluation. The presentation suggests a process-driven approach to a 1:1 initiative that starts by identifying learning outcomes for students, devising instructional practices and tools that achieve these outcomes, and finally deciding which devices would best support the teaching & learning. It is a backwards-by-design approach in comparison to what may otherwise seem like a simple choice of what is the best device to get for everyone; however, it is not that simple.</div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;"><b>BYOD/BYOT Policies Need Closer Look</b></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.securedgenetworks.com/Portals/80068/images/byod%20(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://www.securedgenetworks.com/Portals/80068/images/byod%20(1).jpg" height="218" width="400" /></a>If you had the choice between a laptop given to you by your work or school, and using the one you already have, which would you choose? It's likely that the device you obtained for yourself meets your specific needs, whereas a device given to you will meet only some needs of yours and mostly those of another party. The generosity and care behind a 1:1 initiative is great, because schools and businesses are considering that they want all individuals to be equally equipped; however, just as teaching, learning, and working do not all happen in the same way for all individuals, we cannot expect that one technology meets the needs of everyone either. So, does a "level playing field" for technology mean that everyone has the <i>same</i> technology, or just that everyone has <i>equally capable</i> technology? This is what makes a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) policy a great way to go. Using the device you already have allows you to tailor your own expertise to meet the challenges of tasks that require technology. It can save districts and businesses lots of capital that could go toward training staff or enhancing some other area of the practice; yet, many places do not have <a href="http://the21stcenturyprincipal.blogspot.com/2012/02/5-areas-of-consideration-for-developing.html" target="_blank">supportive BYOD/BYOT policies</a> in place. Productive adults in the professional world will be hard-pressed to deny the indispensable nature of their personal mobile devices or laptops, and that is an important thing to consider for the learning environment as well. Cell phones can be <a href="http://www.teachhub.com/how-use-cell-phones-learning-tools" target="_blank">learning tools</a>, but only if there are supportive policies in place to allow them to be. When considering technology in the classroom or workplace, BYOD/BYOT should be a top priority. There are <a href="http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/22454-Four-Best-Practices-for-BYOD-Policies.html" target="_blank">best practices of a sustainable policy</a>, <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/how-to-write-a-byod-policy-7000003502/" target="_blank">step-by-step guidelines</a> for forming a policy, and <a href="http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/tipsforsmallbusiness/10-things-to-know-before-creating-byod-policy.html" target="_blank">important considerations</a> for any policy writing of the sort in either business or education. It might be helpful to take a look at <a href="http://byod.wiki.caiu.org/Policy+Examples" target="_blank">example policies already in place elsewhere</a> before formulating your own. From business, to education, to <a href="http://www.govtech.com/pcio/articles/Toolkit-Bring-Your-Own-Device-Government.html" target="_blank">government agencies</a>, great examples of BYOD/BYOT policy can guide you in the right direction. It is true that BYOD/BYOT is <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/vcuadms647/weekly-sessions/module-4/w12-week-twelve-week-of-november-14/the-byod-debate" target="_blank">a debate in progress</a>, but with solid discussion and planning the best decision can be made. If your school, classrooms, businesses, or departments are looking into ways to incorporate technology, then a BYOD/BYOT policy is in need. Supportive policies make best practices possible. </div>
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Mr. Abudhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14646164735586747785noreply@blogger.com114tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-74777431324225144672012-09-23T07:59:00.001-04:002012-09-23T08:02:44.721-04:00Use Google For Your Class Calendar: Subscribing to a Google Calendar and Syncing to an iOS Device<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZDmMClQOU_qcPZ4fbjhZCxycMEbd9b2pX9TkdirgCaJoHER6dlCvSDaSqce6ltRfoMOxTX7PtDqkr4UwMSQPiqjg0d4txnn3tZ1I3c7tntbINj8oiKGeoDwREde7GlWp-Xkz1oEV6O3Y/s1600/iPhone+View.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZDmMClQOU_qcPZ4fbjhZCxycMEbd9b2pX9TkdirgCaJoHER6dlCvSDaSqce6ltRfoMOxTX7PtDqkr4UwMSQPiqjg0d4txnn3tZ1I3c7tntbINj8oiKGeoDwREde7GlWp-Xkz1oEV6O3Y/s320/iPhone+View.png" width="213" /></a></div>
This year, our class calendar is being done with <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/abudsci/chemistry/chem-tech" target="_blank">Google Calendar</a>. This provides us really streamlined integration with our <a href="https://www.google.com/a/gpschools.com/ServiceLogin?service=CPanel&passive=1209600&cpbps=1&continue=https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/gpschools.com/Dashboard&followup=https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/gpschools.com/Dashboard" target="_blank">Google Apps accounts</a> and allows students to sync the class calendar right to a mobile device. The steps to subscribe to the class Google Calendar should be done on the web from a computer by logging into your <a href="http://gmail.com/" target="_blank">Google account</a> and choosing the Calendar app from the apps ribbon. Then, once it is in your Google calendar, you can go to your mobile device and have the calendar push right to you! If you have an Android device, the steps to sync your Google calendar are simple. All you need to do is login to your device with the same Google account with which you subscribed to the class calendar. Done. Then, it comes right to your device. However, if you are using an iOS device, you have to go through a few more steps that are not as obvious, including adding your Google account as a Microsoft Exchange account.<br />
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Keeping a class calendar can be tough enough, but making it available to everyone outside of your room is almost an insurmountable challenge. Google Calendar makes it really simple to accomplish both. Leveraging the mobile technology along with the Google app creates a perfect combination of accessibility and ease of use. Parents, students, counselors, and other advisors can subscribe to the class calendar and have it come right to their device. They can set their own reminders for an event on the class calendar and be much more organized for class. If you haven't tried Google Calendar yet, or you ever wanted to have your class calendar available on a mobile device for yourself or anyone else, it is an essential tool for classroom organization. Plus, think of all the paper and board space you will save <i>in the classroom</i> by not having to keep a physical calendar! Need to make a change and communicate it to everyone quickly outside of class time? No sweat--Google Calendars has you covered!<br />
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Full steps for this entire process of subscribing to, and syncing, a Google calendar are provided in the following tutorial slideshow. There are screenshots as well as step-by-step instructions. This tutorial was made using <a href="http://skitch.com/" target="_blank">Skitch</a> for the iPad and MacBook.<br />
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Mr. Abudhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14646164735586747785noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-49466193022443984172012-09-10T19:41:00.003-04:002012-09-10T21:21:07.177-04:00Acknowledging Your Roots: Lessons From the Detroit Lions' 1st Win of 2012<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Just last weekend, the Detroit Lions and St. Louis Rams opened their NFL season against one another. As the first matchup of the regular season for each team, this game was one that garnered a lot of attention--for a number of reasons. One of those reasons had to do with who was on the sidelines. Jim Schwartz, head coach of the Lions, and Jeff Fisher, head coach of the Rams, not only used to work together in Tennessee, but Fisher <a href="http://www.pressandguide.com/articles/2012/09/06/sports/doc5048956cafcae375688069.txt?viewmode=fullstory" target="_blank">both hired and mentored Schwartz</a> before he came to the Lions. It's not very often that these two teams meet, which added to the excitement of the matchup between these two coaches, but learning a little about the background of the coaches' relationship sheds light on why this game was as hyped as it was for both Schwartz and Fisher. Fisher mentored Schwartz and helped him develop in his role as he rose in the ranks to where he is today. Transforming from a student of Fisher's, Schwartz is now a coaching colleague of his on a competing team, but Schwartz didn't try explicitly to make this game about their relationship and history; it was about football.<br />
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The game itself, as the Lions season always seems to start seasons, had <a href="http://espn.go.com/blog/nfcnorth/post/_/id/46015/free-head-exam-detroit-lions-35" target="_blank">plenty of suspense, excitement and concern</a>; however, as I watched this game and followed the news story surrounding the coaching matchup of "student vs. teacher," I couldn't help but reflect a little on my own career as an educator and how mentors & teachers have helped make me into the successful professional I have become. It's no surprise, even to the those who were least fond of school, that there was something to learn from every teacher you have ever had. For me, I wasn't always the best academic student in high school, but I had great experiences with and really learned a lot from my teachers. I looked up to all of them and saw the rapport in the classroom as more than just a transmission of facts about a subject matter. It was role modeling, mentoring, coaching, and leading all in one. </div>
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Some of the lessons that I learned from my teachers in school didn't crystalize until much later in life, but I can name something that I learned from every one of them. Now, being a high school teacher myself, and having the privilege to work at my alma mater with some of those same teachers who I looked up to for so long, I really see a lot of the influence that they had on me--it comes out in my teaching and how I think about teaching. </div>
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I can relate a lot with Jim Schwartz, as he regards Jeff Fisher, because he owes a lot to Fisher for helping him to become as successful as he is. The game was not an opportunity just for a team to win against another team, it was an opportunity to put all the skills, which a teacher passed on to a student, to use; it was a chance to impress the mentor and pay homage to that mentorship. I'd imagine it was a bit nerve-racking for Jim Schwartz, though he categorically downplayed the situation.</div>
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I remember when I first was considering education as my profession. In trying to answer what I thought was a calling to a profession other than medicine, my first instinct was to connect with some of my former high school teachers. That's exactly what I did. I contacted them and went to do classroom observations. What I saw on those observations looked to me, as one of my <a href="http://n3lfp.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">mentors</a> typically puts it, "exactly the same, just different" as what I remembered as a student. Some of the things I was observing looked familiar. But as an adult with a few more global experiences under my belt, what they were doing in their classrooms was so much <i>more</i> impressive than it even was before. I had an intuitive sense during those observations, but still a persistent curiosity, about why they were doing what they were doing. Some of it came out in conversations after classes and really sparked my interest more. It really helped me want to be a teacher to see my former teachers teach. So, that's when I decided to answer my calling and pursue teaching.</div>
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Though they all made it look easy, I learned quickly that it is quite far from easy; in fact, it's about as easy as mastering a foreign language. I took as much away from my education and training to become a science teacher as I could; I learned as much as I could from colleagues in my first two teaching jobs before arriving back at my high school to refine and hone my skills. Never would I have said that I thought I was good enough to be part of that same staff of all-star teachers that I learned from, but when the stars aligned and I had the offer to work there, I turned down the multiple other offers I had for teaching positions to accept the chance to work with those educators at my alma mater. I was honored to work at the same building where I once walked the halls as a student, but moreover the honor came from the chance to work with some of that same staff. </div>
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I'd imagine that, in a way, the Jim Schwartz and Jeff Fisher coaching matchup has a lot to remind me of what I am grateful for in my career. The mentors I had who taught me math, science, literature, and language, among other subjects, were now my colleagues. I remember how nervous I was coming into the building to teach there at first. My excitement was hardly containable though it was conflated with a familiar eagerness to do my best. The stakes however, were different for me, and could not be downplayed in my mind, like Schwartz claimed they could for him. I was now constantly measuring my teaching up against those who I regarded as the best. I wanted to do my best for myself and for my students; however, I really set a high bar for myself to do a great job, which I wanted to reach, in order to show those former teachers (now colleagues) what a great job they did in teaching me. </div>
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As I read up and watched the Fisher-Schwartz matchup, I thought about how this is not the first time two coaches went head to head under such circumstances; in fact, it happens often with players and coaches in many sports leagues. I did wonder about all the feelings of humility, respect, gratitude and eagerness that the two coaches must have had toward playing against each other. Although teachers are most certainly not 'playing against one another' in education, teachers and coaches are all 'playing' on the same level, as colleagues. Along with playing on the same level, especially when coaches (or teachers) were on different levels prior, come some expectations placed on everyone involved (both intrinsic and extrinsic) related to the transition period into the new relationship. They may give rise to various perceptions and yet more expectations, but they are natural to any shift in relationship status.</div>
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In the first head-to-head meeting that would explicitly define their new relationship, Schwartz likely had something to prove to Fisher in this matchup. Primarily, I believe Schwartz sought to demonstrate that he had become the coach Fisher believed he could be. That's a tough expectation to meet, regardless of from where it comes, and yet it could foster sentiments that might be a bit intimidating at times. I think about this every time I have to get up and speak in front of my colleagues. Today, for example, I had to address the entire staff to present a new professional learning community idea, and it never seems to get any easier on the inside for me. As long as there are people in the room who I continue to look up to, I try to stand up fully emerged as Gary the educator, but in my mind I'm still transitioning from Gary the student. What typically runs through my mind is I'm thinking, "Gary, you owe it to these educators to be awesome, because they believed in you and helped you be awesome." </div>
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Perhaps a part of that sentiment will always remain with me, because, like Jim Schwartz, I have always had high regard for my teachers, but maybe now that they are colleagues that sentiment will continue to help me to always strive to be better. I have participated in teacher rounds and watched some of my colleagues teach. I took something away from all of them as a professional now, just as I did as a student then. I have also been on collaborative teams with them, seeking to do what will best help our students. Most importantly though, the sentiment of always wanting live up to my education role models pushes me to be reflective of what I can do differently and better. With such talent surrounding me in my building, I feel like an Olympic athlete placed in the midst of the best talent of their event, and that both brings nerves and a desire to impress. </div>
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I'm sure that Schwartz felt some of this sentiment too, on Sunday, as he acknowledged that he was fortunate to have teachers to learn from like Fisher, but would play his team's best football to compete against Fisher's team. All in all, the game was played on the field and what happened on the sidelines is only secondary to the game, but like Schwartz we need to acknowledge our past for where we came from and who helped guide us along the way. Regardless of who the coaches are, maybe the take away from this game is not that the student reached the level of the teacher, but that the student reached that level because of the teacher. And, maybe that's a good enough reason why Jim Schwartz downplayed the matchup. </div>
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Mr. Abudhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14646164735586747785noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-56047308994522931662012-09-06T23:23:00.003-04:002012-09-06T23:23:49.707-04:00The Magic Number Cube Consensus Game<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I always tell colleagues that the best things I learned about teaching I learned on <a href="http://bit.ly/abudtweet" target="_blank">Twitter</a>. Recently, I tried out a an activity that was new to my classroom: <a href="http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/subversive-lab-grouping-game/" target="_blank">The Subversive Lab Grouping Game</a>. This activity inspired me to continue with the 'subversive' teaching through games on day two. This activity is one I have done in previous years, but it's been a few and now I have repurposed it based on my success with <a href="http://twitter.com/fnoschese" target="_blank">Frank Noschese's</a> lab grouping game. This is called the Magic Number Cube, and it is a team-building activity that I picked up in the physics modeling workshop I took a few years ago. It's an activity that has students collaborating to think through a goal-less problem in order to learn numerous lessons about my class, including the process of arriving at consensus.<br />
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My colleague <a href="http://n3lfp.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Don Pata</a> and I have discussed in the past the factors which we find to lead most to student success in our modeling classrooms. It turns out that the classrooms with greatest student success are the classes where the students have the best ability to work together to arrive at consensus. In the modeling methodology of teaching science, teachers lead students through the modeling cycle. The modeling cycle requires students to develop mental models based on observations that can explain or predict patterns and relationships in physical situations. Students share their observations and data from experiments with each other through guided classroom discussions and must arrive at consensus based on the evidence to develop a model. Models are then deployed on novel situations and to solve new problems.<br />
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Without forming consensus, students leave holes in their understanding and questions unanswered about their observations or physical situations we've investigated as a class. This makes the development of a model unstable, and thus the deployment of an unstable model leads to unreliable problem-solving and understanding. This is the reason why forming consensus as a class is so important for students to hone as a skill in the classroom. That's why we go to the lengths to train students in the process of learning in this manner before letting them loose on the content in this way. If they are not well-prepared to learn in this setting of a modeling classroom, then it won't be as great a learning opportunity for them as it could be--and we want the best for our students--so, we have to get them the best opportunities.<br />
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The opening days of my class are spent on team-building, growing the<a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/08/8-steps-to-engineer-your-classroom-brand.html" target="_blank"> classroom climate that fosters successful teamwork</a>, and generating consensus friendly discussion. As I mentioned, the first day activity was a lab-grouping game, which was quite successful to communicate several messages to students about focusing on process and working as a team. The second day activity, the Magic Number Cube, continues in this same theme but with a slightly different focus in its message.<br />
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Here's how the activity works:<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Students work in groups of four</li>
<li>A six-sided cube made out of cardboard and covered in blank printer paper (about the size of a basketball) sits on the floor </li>
<li>On five sides of the cube are written the numbers 1-5, just like a die</li>
<li>Students can observe the cube on all sides, up close, or from far away</li>
<li>The cube cannot be touched, moved, or flipped over</li>
<li><b>Students must determine what is on the bottom face of the cube, and what reasoning helped them arrive at their determination</b></li>
<li>Students then create a <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2011/07/making-thinking-visible-using.html" target="_blank">whiteboard</a> with their group that displays what they think is on the bottom face of the cube and explains their reasoning</li>
</ul>
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Once students have constructed their whiteboards, they will present their ideas to their classmates and discuss everyone's reasoning. This is a process that <a href="http://pzweb.harvard.edu/vt/VisibleThinking_html_files/VisibleThinking1.html" target="_blank">makes thinking visible</a> to other students. After discussing the ideas of each group and giving students the opportunity to question one another's reasoning, we ask students to vote as a class on one idea that they can accept. We do this with a 'show of thumbs' where:</div>
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<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Thumbs Up = agree with the idea and reasoning</li>
<li>Thumbs Down = disagree with the idea and reasoning</li>
<li>Thumbs Sideways = could accept the idea but perhaps differ in reasoning</li>
</ol>
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After an initial vote, we see where the class stands, give students a chance to ask additional questions, change their minds based on any newly shared information, and then revote. When the class arrives at consensus, they erase their whiteboards. </div>
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The importance of arriving at consensus is discussed with students; the process they just went through to arrive at consensus is made transparent by naming/describing the steps; and the activity is debriefed by students. </div>
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Students are really eager to find out what is on the bottom face of the cube, but it must be stressed to students that this activity is done to show how learning will look/feel in this class:</div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>It can be frustrating not to know everything, sometimes; however, uncertainty helps us grow in our understanding</li>
<li>It is not about answers, it's about how you arrive at answers and solve problems</li>
<li>When we focus on answers, and not process, it leads to a fixed mindset</li>
<li>Fixed mindedness promotes worry about grades, being smart, and leads to self-limitations</li>
<li>Our class encourages growth mindset, where students can work to surpass their current knowledge and ability through teamwork, critical thinking, and practice</li>
<li>The process we used in this activity to arrive at consensus will be our most important learning tool</li>
</ul>
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This activity is a very low-risk opportunity for classes to practice all the skills necessary to doing the model development cycle, whiteboarding, and arriving at class consensus. It was originally used as a get-to-know-you team-building activity when I first saw it; however, I wanted it to be more than just that. It has proven to be a thought-provoking activity to promote discussion and questioning in students as well as demonstrate model development and arriving at consensus.</div>
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One of the most insightful parts of this activity, and perhaps a subversive outcome, is observing the variety of ideas that students share about what might be on the bottom face. Student-thinking and lines of reasoning are two fascinating elements of education, and this activity illustrates those very well. </div>
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All too often, school is reduced down to answers. The focus on answers starts early in elementary school and 'programs' student thinking, which leads to a fixed mindset as students get older. The limitations of a fixed mindset are perhaps at the root of many of the challenges students experience in school, but this can all be overcome if the focus is shifted from answers to process, the mindset can become a mind shift. Students can begin to move toward a growth mindset and realize that their potential is up to them. Ultimately, isn't this a message we want students to take away from school and use in their future? </div>
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Mr. Abudhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14646164735586747785noreply@blogger.com64tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-60179313111170064142012-09-06T22:12:00.001-04:002012-09-06T22:16:24.519-04:00The #Tweet180Project<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I can remember back to elementary school dinner table conversations with my parents and siblings, they even continued into middle and high school. The question was always the same, "What'd you learn at school today?" My responses evolved over time as a student and the level of detail seemed to diminish for some reason. Verbal pattern baldness, perhaps???<br />
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Now, looking back to those supper-side chats, I realize that they held a far greater function than I was able to see at the time. The question of "what did you learn in school today?" is really a motivation for a student to reflect on the day. As a teacher, I want my students thinking about my class after they leave. Reflection is something that I hope to foster in my students. But often times, students forget, just as I did at that time in my life, to stop and reflect on the school day. Thinking about what took place, what was memorable, or how the learning connected to outside life are typically low on the priority list and get overlooked. </div>
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It was not until this past summer, when I took the modeling workshop in chemistry (at Mansfield University in PA) that I really got a contextual understanding of the power of simple reflection. I decided that I was going to blog about the workshop every day and what I learned in the workshop session that day. It was an arduous process to blog every day for me, but I adapted and eventually completed my <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/modchem-day-1.html" target="_blank">15-day project to chronicle the #ModChem12 experience</a>. As I read through my blog posts, and as I chat with others who have read them, I realize that those blog posts solidified my learning in that workshop. Those blogs helped me articulate my take-aways from the workshop and realize how it all went together. It's crystal clear to me, now, how important reflection is to the learning process and to active engagement. </div>
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As an homage to that timeless dinner table conversation starter, "What'd you learn in school today?" and motivated by my experience with daily blogging after class myself, I wanted to do a project this school year to get students reflecting on class in a digital way. I considered blogs, discussion boards, and chats; however, for a first crack at a project like this, I wanted it to be easily accessible to everyone. Two other considerations I had in developing this project included my nascent <a href="http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/rethinkinghomework.htm" target="_blank">rethinking of homework</a> (thanks @<a href="http://twitter.com/mpershan" target="_blank">mpershan</a> and @<a href="http://twitter.com/kellyoshea" target="_blank">kellyoshea</a>) and the <a href="http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/the-180-photo-project/" target="_blank">180 Photo Project</a> by an outstanding science teacher in NYC, <a href="http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Frank Noschese</a>. Frank's 180 project sought to document the entire school year in a photo-a-day reel. Thus, I give you my project for this school year--the #Tweet180Project.</div>
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This project seeks to continue those dinner conversations and have students answer the question "what'd you learn in school today?" in tweets each day. That's it. Simple objective; simple execution; simple motivation. The value of being able to answer that question, in 140 characters or less, can start a conversation, keep a conversation going, or illuminate a new conversation that needs to take place. The #Tweet180Project will encourage students to be succinct in their reflections and provide formative feedback to me in working with students in my teaching. </div>
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The project definitely has the overarching theme of "what'd you learn in school today?"but the exact iteration of that question may differ from day to day. Each day, I will list the question for students that the will answer. They include our <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/08/8-steps-to-engineer-your-classroom-brand.html" target="_blank">class hashtag</a> in their tweet and answer the question. Pretty straight-forward, right? I hope so. And I hope that this becomes a spark for student growth in reflective thinking. </div>
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Each day the Twitter task differs slightly, yet still keeps in theme with "what'd you learn in school today?"</div>
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On day 1, it was: tweet something <b>memorable</b> from class today.</div>
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On day 2, it was: tweet something <b>unfamiliar</b> from class today.</div>
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On day 3, it was: tweet something <b>surprising</b> from class today.</div>
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And so on, and so on it will go...</div>
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From time to time, I will try to aggregate example tweets along with the the task prompt and post them. At the end, I hope to have a full timeline of the school year from the student perspective. This will serve as a running record for students as well as to how their thinking progressed throughout the year. Our school has several initiatives going this year, including to get students writing as often as possible in all classes; incorporate collaboration, creativity, communication & critical thinking; make thinking visible; teach <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/09/04/students-social-media-warnings/" target="_blank">digital citizenship</a>; and, to foster a <a href="http://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/index.html" target="_blank">growth mindset</a> in students. The #Tweet180Project aims to target both the propagation of dinner-style "what'd you learn at school today?" questions as well as our building and district initiatives.</div>
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I'm really excited about the response so far to this project. Hundreds of tweets are going around each day so far, some including photos, about the topics. Igniting small conversations, questions, and good "chatter" about physics and chemistry. As time goes on, I imagine these will increase in quality and quantity. The #Tweet180Project is just one of many things I am looking forward to in my classroom this year with students. </div>
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<u>It's going to be the best year ever!!</u></div>
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**<i style="text-align: center;">For anyone who is interested in this project idea but perhaps does not use Twitter in class with students, this project resembles what my English teacher colleagues call 'quick writes' and can be done as short journal entries in a notebook at the end of each day. To maintain the concise nature of the Twitter approach, you can even consider putting a character or word limit on their quick writes if you chose to do them in notebooks. Make sure that the prompts honor the main objective of this project--"what'd you learn in school today?" Just find a way to share those ideas aloud among students so that it can become a conversation too.</i></div>
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Mr. Abudhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14646164735586747785noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-90736017314471481322012-08-27T16:30:00.001-04:002012-08-29T23:11:39.169-04:008 Steps to Engineer Your 'Classroom Brand'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
At the start of the school year, I had plenty of motivation for creating a <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/08/creating-your-classroom-brand-story-of.html" target="_blank">classroom brand</a><b></b>, but had to devise how I
would implement my <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/08/creating-your-classroom-brand-story-of.html" target="_blank">classroom brand</a> in my physics classes and determine what it would require
to get students to buy in to the brand. The classroom brand had already been chosen, TeamPhysics, but without much of a background in
marketing, implementing the brand was a challenge. So, I looked at all that I knew of
successful branding campaigns and put pieces together from each to form the elements of my
classroom brand.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="356" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/14113580" style="border-width: 1px 1px 0; border: 1px solid #CCC; margin-bottom: 5px;" width="427"> </iframe> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 5px;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><strong> <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/gabud/engineering-your-classroom-brand-in-8-steps" target="_blank" title="Engineering your classroom brand in 8 steps">Engineering your classroom brand in 8 steps</a> </strong> from <strong><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/gabud" target="_blank">Grosse Pointe North High School</a></strong> </span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
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It required several steps to really engineer the brand
to start. From what I learned about branding my classroom, here's what
is important to do in order to get started:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Write your classroom experience sentence - </b></li>
</ul>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I thought of <a href="http://www.danpink.com/archives/2011/01/whats-your-sentence-the-video" target="_blank">Dan Pink's 'What's Your Sentence?'</a>
presentation on this. He challenges people to define their life's
accomplishments (what they want to be remembered for) in a single
sentence. I realized, after thinking about this, that most brands keep
it simple, like Nike's <i>Just Do It.</i> So, I needed a sentence for my
classroom. The sentence needed to answer the question: what do I want
my classroom to be known for after students leave? Once I had this
sentence, then I could go forward with the rest of the branding. After
all, isn't it the most important thing to know what a brand stands for?</blockquote>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Design a logo for your classroom brand</b> - </li>
</ul>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Every good brand needs a logo. The visual
recognition alone is imperative to the branding concept. When I thought
of a brand, there were really two choices: an icon logo or a word logo.
For TeamPhysics, it seemed sufficient to use the word as the logo (like
Google does.) To make it stand out and be unique, I thought I would
craft the word TeamPhysics out of physics symbols.</blockquote>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Come up with a hashtag for your classroom brand -</b></li>
</ul>
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If you're not using Twitter in your classroom,
then this step does not yet apply to you; however, if Twitter is part
of your educator world, then you need a hashtag for students to come
together about your brand and about your classroom on Twitter. Research
your ideas before making it official. Sometimes, hashtags have more than
one meaning or acronyms have significance in a foreign language, and
you don't want overlap or muddled conversations on Twitter. We went with
#TeamPhysics, but over time this was used by people around the world
who weren't associated with my class; so, next year I will choose
something different. Perhaps an acronym with a year (e.g., tmphys12) can
be your hashtag. Remember that social media can help extend the
classroom experience beyond the four walls of your room.</blockquote>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>You need a mantra for your classroom brand -</b></li>
</ul>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
Think of the short sub-sentences that companies have underneath their logo. <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Tumblr</a>
has a good one: "follow the world's creators." This is something that
students can remember and recite to others about your classroom brand.
It helps build that abstract element of what the brand stands for. The
TeamPhysics mantra is "Challenge accepted."</div>
</blockquote>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Your classroom brand should embody student-developed norms and values -</b></li>
</ul>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
Not
at all to be confused with classroom rules, norms and values are ideals
that students seek to have in their classroom community. Develop these
together in the first days of the school year and then promulgate them. A
good example of a norm from TeamPhysics refers to what happens after
whiteboard presentations or students volunteer. The norm is: <i>everyone claps, and it's a golf clap.</i>
These are those behaviors that everyone wants to have going on but
don't come from rules. Much like tipping a server at a restaurant is a
norm, not a rule.</div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Classroom brand paraphernalia </b>-</li>
</ul>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
Start
planning early to find out who your school or athletic department uses
to get t-shirts made. Have students participate in the design of the
shirts, choose colors, etc. Get them made as early as possible in the
year. Encourage everyone to get one, and, if you can, find grant money,
booster club or parent club support, to get everyone a shirt. You can
have special days where students where their shirts, like test days
(like game day support for a team.) It helps to promote the classroom
brand and unify the group. </div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b> Make your classroom brand ubiquitous to students -</b></li>
</ul>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Any
handout, assignment, or assessment that students receive from you
should have your classroom brand logo on it somewhere. Whenever you (or
your students) talk about your class, make sure everyone is passing the
pronoun test: do statements about the class contain "we" language or
not? Classroom culture is not about teacher vs. students; it's about us
together. Focus the language used in this way. Stop referring to your
class by its course catalog name and start referring to it by classroom
brand. Students don't "take physics with Mr. Abud" they are "a member of
TeamPhysics." And, when we had our cardboard boat races in the spring,
the programs all had "Presented by TeamPhysics" with our logo. It's
really the little things that make it work.</blockquote>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Obtain survey-based feedback on your classroom brand from students from time to time -</b></li>
</ul>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Just like corporate brands obtain feedback from consumers to see how
their brand is doing, it is important that students get feedback
opportunities that are risk-free where they can share ideas for making
the classroom even better. Anonymous surveys, class discussions, small
group discussions and whiteboard presentations are all possibilities for
obtaining this information.<br />
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TeamPhysics was one of the best ideas I have ever had
for building classroom culture and establishing the learning climate I
wanted to foster in my students. It fits with the way that I teach
science and my philosophy of education. It gives the students something
to be a part of and not merely feel they are just in another class. This
can be really helpful when the going gets tough. Since physics is
taught using the <a href="http://www.modelinginstruction.org/" target="_blank">Modeling Method</a>
we are doing a tremendous amount of student-centered activity in groups
as well as project-based learning. The atmosphere of the classroom is
that of a team, and needs to be just that, in order for Modeling
Instruction to work. Modeling Instruction doesn't work if you don't
build rapport and the fastest way to building rapport is to promote a
positive classroom culture. <br />
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The students really came
together around the classroom brand and talked it up so much and so
regularly that it did become something bigger than I alone could ever
have made it. The principal would comment to me about how he noticed
students regularly Tweeting about physics using the hashtag #TeamPhysics
and that they seemed to be genuinely interested in the notion of
'physics as sport.' It was rarely homework to Tweet about physics.
Instead, we would have #TweetYour______ Twitter activities during class,
where students would share pictures of their labs, whiteboards, or even
just their data. Also, we held class discussions, much like #scichat,
on Twitter during class and played Kelly O'Shea's <a href="http://kellyoshea.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/whiteboarding-mistake-game-a-guide/" target="_blank">whiteboard mistake game</a>
using Twitter as well (#WhatsUpWithThatBoard.) Students outside of
class would post comments or questions about homework, share photos of
projects in the works, or just share links to physics related stuff they
saw outside of school or online. When the students started sharing on
their own volition about physics with the #TeamPhysics hashtag, I felt I
had accomplished something with the classroom brand.<br />
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To
round out our classroom culture, we had character building activities
during the year, opportunities for community service, and celebrations
of accomplishment.<br />
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The Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament
is a good example. This single elimination challenge of the classic game
has the winners of each round taking the losers with them to the next
round as their cheering squad. This is the "biggest fan" stipulation. If
you lose, you become the winner's biggest fan and cheer them on. By the
finals, the class is divided in half shouting and cheering on one or
the other student. There are plenty of character-building team-building <a href="http://www.youthwork-practice.com/games/icebreaker-warm-up-games.html" target="_blank">activities</a> out there. They take only a few minutes and can make the difference in sculpting your classroom culture from time to time.<br />
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In
December, we adopt a local family whose name has been submitted as
needing assistance for Christmas. The class divides up into groups and
organizes purchasing gifts and food for the entire family for Christmas.
Then, they have a wrapping party one day (complete with hot chocolate
and donuts) and then choose a few students to personally deliver the
gifts to the family. This is always a memorable opportunity for students
and makes the class seem to be more than just 'learning physics.'<br />
<br />
Donut
holes or popcorn parties are easy to do, and they go well with
activities in class. For example, if you have presentations coming up
after a big project, get a bunch of popcorn for everyone to share and
eat while they observe the presentations. Putting this extra tidbit into
your classroom activities can make 'scary presentation time' into a
celebration of accomplishment.<br />
<br />
When it all comes down
to it, there are so many activities and elements of the TeamPhysics
classroom that stem from the classroom branding idea. For me, the
classroom brand had to entail a sense of team, foster student-student
and teacher-student rapport, help extend learning beyond the school day,
and be something with which students could identify. Capitalizing on
the popularity of the #Team________ concept on Twitter, and leveraging
the power of branding, helped to create the classroom culture that I
always wanted. The reason I believe it was successful now, looking back,
is that everything I wanted my classroom to stand for was all
represented in one centralized abstract thing, the classroom brand. Once
your classroom brand takes off, other students and colleagues will
start to take note. It will bring positive attention to your students
and their classroom, which will reinforce the greatness of that
classroom culture.<br />
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Gary G. Abud, Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10082000053180484544noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-23296285237181415752012-08-27T16:28:00.000-04:002012-08-29T22:41:34.675-04:00Creating Your Classroom Brand: The Story of #TEAMPHYSICS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This is a story about classroom culture. It includes an introduction to, what I suspect is, a novel concept--that of the <i>classroom brand</i>. It is something that integrates marketing, psychology, and education. I suspect that this has been out there but not well defined as of yet. My hope is to shed some light on what I refer to as the <i>classroom brand </i>and explain how I applied this concept to my own classes to create the classroom culture I was trying to foster in my students. The story I am about to tell is in two parts. The first part is the background and motivation for why I chose to brand my classroom, and the second is the story of my first year with a classroom brand.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://wordandimage.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/logo-alphabet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="253" src="http://wordandimage.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/logo-alphabet.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The alphabet constructed out of popular brands.</i></td></tr>
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I would like to begin by disclosing that I am no researched expert on marketing nor the psychology of advertising, and so the thoughts here are my own. I have not seen in the literature nor in any personal blog or news article anything that describes what I call the <i>classroom brand</i>, but that does not mean I am the first to note this. Much has been written about brands <i>in the</i> <i>classroom</i>, but nothing about an actual classroom brand. Based on my own background in education, philosophy and cognitive psychology, I have compiled years of personal observation to examine how we are hard-wired to accept brands and branding based on the way in which our brains form associations. Once upon a time, someone pointed me to the <a href="http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/branding-alphabet" target="_blank">brand alphabet</a>
to illustrate how associations were vital in learning. The alphabet has
now gone through several branding iterations since the original (shown
above) was created. You can even test yourself to see how many you would
get, which should make the argument for the power of branding pretty
compelling.<br />
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Perhaps what I point out here will seem obvious to you; but at the least, I hope that it seems a logical generalization about the nature of how we think as consumers which follows from your own experiential evidence. Finally, I hope that you can get a sense of what branding can do for a classroom, especially at the secondary level, because the age group responds so well to branding campaigns in general.<br />
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The power of the brand has been well known in the business world for years; however, looking around at other areas of life, you will likely find that branding has spread beyond a mere marketing tactic in business to almost all aspects of culture. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_awareness" target="_blank">Brand recognition</a> part of our cultural upbringing and it takes a hold on everyone, whether subconscious or not. Everyone gets exposure to certain products, games, services, and entertainment throughout their lives. They come to know, like, and dislike certain brands based on their experiences. As we mature, we begin not only to recognize brands, or to simply be aware of them, but we identify with them, or against them.<br />
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The pervasiveness of brands in culture can be seen in all countries and with all age groups. a <a href="http://educationnext.org/the-brand-in-the-classroom/" target="_blank">survey of school children and college students from a couple of years ago</a> describes top brand recognition. Though this article describes that teachers should take advantage of brands in their classroom, the context is different than what I am referring to here. Where this author suggests to use brands that students recognize in the classroom, such as Google or Microsoft, I am proposing that you create your own <b>classroom brand</b>--<u>a brand that represents what your classroom stands for and the type of "product" you sell as an educator.</u></blockquote>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b style="color: #990000;">Part 1: Motivation for a classroom brand - arguments for the power of branding </b></li>
</ul>
<a href="http://static.justin.my/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/logos-quiz-answers-level-1.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://static.justin.my/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/logos-quiz-answers-level-1.png" width="320" /></a><a href="http://static.justin.my/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/logos-quiz-answers-level-1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>Few could argue that children are drawn to logos and products based on colors, shapes, or appealing design. Regardless of the type of product or the quality of it, children can recognize and even choose brands simply based on the visual it gives. Watch a parent with a small child in the grocery store checkout lane to see this for yourself. It's no accident that certain impulse shopping items, toys, and candy are all placed there. In adolescence, people become more aware of social branding. The products associated with fashion, style, class, and money start to work on the minds of kids in middle school. This motivates them to buy certain products to communicate a certain image to other people. Even the image that they choose to communicate has been branded and "sold" to adolescents--e.g., the skinny girl who wears a lot of makeup, or the male jock. The film <a href="http://www.missrepresentation.org/" target="_blank">Miss Representation</a> does an excellent job of illustrating the influence of branding on young girls in the long-lasting implications. Of course, some would call these image brands a "stereotype," but in the way that they are being pushed to consumers, they are an actual identifiable product themselves, and thus they are a brand. Everything from food, to entertainment, to personal image is branded for school-aged children to experience. Brands are ubiquitous, and a recent mobile app game called <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/logos-quiz-game/id478364212?mt=8" target="_blank">Logos quiz</a> very clearly points out this fact. In this game, you are given a set of logos for brands and try to guess the name of the brand based only on visual recognition. It was a very popular game with the high school students in my physics class this past year. <br />
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The experiences we have with brands as children and young adults then shape our brand associations and choices for the rest of our lives. To some degree, the extent to which we consume brands helps design and shape our self image, beliefs, perceptions, and personality. As adults, we are exposed to more abstract branding campaigns than those to which children are exposed. The brands start to come more in the form of beliefs and choices. An election year is a prime opportunity for one to see this at work. The President has initiated a campaign of '<a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/30/obama-tries-forward-campaign-slogan-after-2008s-hope-and-change/" target="_blank">forward</a>' for 2012, in contrast to the '<a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/30/obama-tries-forward-campaign-slogan-after-2008s-hope-and-change/" target="_blank">change we need</a>' that was behind his 2008 election. On the challenger's side, <a href="http://www.mittromney.com/learn/mitt" target="_blank">Mitt Romney's</a> team has launched a 'believe in America' campaign. Both candidates for president hope to compel voters to identify with them, but each has chosen to do so through branding and brand recognition. But this isn't the first time we have seen this sort of thing. Political campaigns have chosen to use branding for as long as they have been documented. Some simply refer to their "slogans" or "image," but these, I argue, are just iterations of branding.<br />
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The branding that takes place in political campaigns is one form of what is referred to as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_branding" target="_blank">personal branding</a>, which some might learn about in <a href="http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/personal-branding-in-the-classroom/" target="_blank">marketing school</a>, but this is a form of branding where a brand that represents and stands for an individual is created that becomes bigger than the mere person alone. If you're unfamiliar with personal branding, you can immediately recognize personal branding if you think of a famous musical act, e.g., the Beatles, or Bob Marley. The Beatles are more than just their music, the musicians, or a logo. The Beatles is the brand that arose from the band. The same is true with Bob Marley--and if you consider politicians in the same way, the brand of Barack Obama or Mitt Romney overshadows the individuals themselves.<br />
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From childhood to adulthood, branding is a pervasive aspect of our lives. Branding even supersedes the cultural, business, or individual level. Having just finished the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Summer_Olympics" target="_blank">2012 London Games</a>, you might recall plenty of Olympic branding going on--"world togetherness, in sport."<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/I_Love_New_York.svg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="185" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/I_Love_New_York.svg" width="200" /></a><br />
<a href="http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/u/us.gif" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="105" src="http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/u/us.gif" width="200" /></a><a href="http://greatlakesgazette.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/pure-michigan-logo_with-tag1.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="85" src="http://greatlakesgazette.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/pure-michigan-logo_with-tag1.jpg" width="200" /></a>Associated with this type of branding of an event is location-based branding, such as that which happens with cities, states, and countries. Branding campaigns such as "I love NY" and "<a href="http://michigan.org/" target="_blank">Pure Michigan</a>" illustrate how locations want to sell themselves as their own brand. Perhaps the most noteworthy location-based branding you are familiar with is that of branding a country. When you see a country's flag, you are seeing its logo--it's brand. And that brand represents all that country embodies. We see the pride associated with the branding of a nation during times of war, tragedy, crisis, or unity. In the U.S., the flag so embodies our country's brand that people put flag stickers on their vehicles, buy U.S. flag clothing, or tint their windows and paint their cars with the stars and stripes. It's not just patriotism; it's branding.<br />
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<a href="http://www.sportsfanimals.com/themes/Custom/SportsFanimals/Design/images/NFL_NBA_NHL_NCAA_MLB_NASCAR_Pet.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="173" src="http://www.sportsfanimals.com/themes/Custom/SportsFanimals/Design/images/NFL_NBA_NHL_NCAA_MLB_NASCAR_Pet.jpg" width="200" /></a>Perhaps the most well-known branding is that associated with sports teams and even individual players. In sports entertainment, branding has had as much, if not more, success than the branding in any other area. From team logos, to players' numbers, to school colors, branding has helped to market and promote sports entities and institutions to the masses. There isn't anything bad about branding, it's just pervasive in the world. Sports is simply a prime example, from school-based athletics to professional leagues, sports team and player brands dominate. <br />
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Don't believe it? Take a guess what the first result will be when you do a <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=jordan&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb" target="_blank">Google search</a> for "Jordan."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPIAapTj0UxfRH-LiEufQ4ddSvkItYBHW5XePEnPIdzJHRIwDfeH-fxWBG8DtJoRac33hzePo73o8Tql6Osg5lDN_qNFFA7Pq1dXqGgPHKh9_nzJvZbObU9XXMPisSXMf7cOoh1N3PAAVH/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-08-27+at+1.54.53+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPIAapTj0UxfRH-LiEufQ4ddSvkItYBHW5XePEnPIdzJHRIwDfeH-fxWBG8DtJoRac33hzePo73o8Tql6Osg5lDN_qNFFA7Pq1dXqGgPHKh9_nzJvZbObU9XXMPisSXMf7cOoh1N3PAAVH/s320/Screen+Shot+2012-08-27+at+1.54.53+PM.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Yea, it says "brand" too...</i></td></tr>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b style="color: #990000;">Addendum to Part 1: Inspiration from the social web</b> </li>
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The success of branding in so many areas of life, especially business and entertainment marketing, shows, at least on the outside, the power that brands can have in representing a product, person, organization, event, location, or even a belief system. But since the dawn of social media and the social web, a new type of branding has arisen on the Internet and it has inspired a new approach to branding in other areas. This type of branding, for lack of a proper term, is an experiential brand. It is the type of brand that <a href="http://www.facebook.com/" target="_blank">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://www.twitter.com/" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, <a href="http://www.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Tumblr</a>, and <a href="http://www.flickr.com/" target="_blank">Flickr</a> all seek to create--one that is based on a shared experience and a type of social connectedness.<br />
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When you think of what the <a href="http://www.nike.com/" target="_blank">Nike</a> brand has done in their campaigns, they've gone from representing products to representing what can be done with those products. When it boils down to it though, Nike is still trying to sell a physical product. Now, contrast that with something like Facebook and what they are (were) trying to 'sell.' It wasn't a physical product, like Nike, but rather theirs is the experience of having (potentially) all the people you know in the same space to interact with while simultaneously documenting/chronicling your own life. This is <i>very</i> different from selling a product. Certainly, Facebook has its critics, myself included, who '<a href="http://thisisturbine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/facebook-dislike-button.png" target="_blank">dislike</a>' some aspects of what Facebook has become, but you cannot argue that it is a brand that represents experience. The same is true of other social media companies out there. The sense of community that one gains from Facebook is the appeal; no matter what someone tells you, they didn't join to play <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FarmVille" target="_blank">Farmville</a>.<br />
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It's because of things like Farmville that I left Facebook a few years ago. The community became too cluttered and lost sight of its original purpose. When it became too cumbersome to navigate Facebook for the sense of connectedness I sought with my family and friends, I knew it was time to abandon ship. So, <a href="http://bit.ly/abudtweet" target="_blank">I joined Twitter in 2009</a> and never looked back. Twitter seemed minimalistic enough to accomplish what I wanted out of a social networking sight--conversation with others and a sense of connectedness based on common interest. The more I learned on Twitter, the more I learned about Twitter...and the more I liked it. I quickly reached the <a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/the-four-stages-of-getting-twitter-infographic_b13339" target="_blank">highest level of Twitter usage</a> and decided it was time to start using it in my teaching with students and colleagues. That's when I learned something that was a game-changer for the way I thought of branding.<br />
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For the longest time, it seemed that you needed to have a big company, big idea, or simply have status worthy of devising a brand; however, on Twitter, anyone and everyone could create and market their own brand. This was ostensibly true to me, as was the nature of the potential for brand creation on twitter, when I saw the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/TeamFollowBack" target="_blank">#TeamFollowBack</a> from one of my students in a tweet and then another in someone's profile. I didn't understand the terminology and had to ask a student to explain it to me: "It's just people who will follow you back," one physics student told me. Apparently, they didn't actually 'join' this team, they just identified with it and as they were being part of it through following the common tenet of "you follow me and I'll follow you back." <br />
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The more I looked into it, the more I began to notice #team__________ on Twitter. People create a hashtag for something they believe in, identify with, or want to promote and make a 'team' out of it that people can 'join' and feel a part of. There's everything from <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/search/?q=%23teamjesus&src=hash" target="_blank">#TeamJesus</a> to #TeamSingle out there. So, this begged the question: could there be a #teamphysics? The more I thought about the possibility of a hashtag #TeamPhysics, the more I realized that it had to stand for something, it would have to be a brand of the experiential sort, but what would that even look like?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3L0PbnFLCkqkHv89HHSdo4gVNbuCBF2_8FTVEZZqBZaMvwniyCgdhR0q6JV3sjLwqURB5KeVR84kkf5T38GTVN21sJCgQtgt_djg67Gc5r_8CZhvVh5TC93MOa9LYhaiPGPwnFYwZvFx-/s1600/Photo+May+05,+9+47+19+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3L0PbnFLCkqkHv89HHSdo4gVNbuCBF2_8FTVEZZqBZaMvwniyCgdhR0q6JV3sjLwqURB5KeVR84kkf5T38GTVN21sJCgQtgt_djg67Gc5r_8CZhvVh5TC93MOa9LYhaiPGPwnFYwZvFx-/s320/Photo+May+05,+9+47+19+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
After mulling it over enough, I had the idea to <b>brand my classroom #TeamPhysics</b>. I proposed the idea to my colleague <a href="https://twitter.com/mr_pata" target="_blank">@mr_pata</a> at our first staff meeting. "I think we should brand our classroom #TeamPhysics, because we really 'sell' a unique version of physics," I said at our department table group. Not a minute went by and the principal walked over to our science teacher table and said, "Good morning team science!" passed out some papers and moved on. We looked at each other, nodded, and realized it was a must do idea to brand the physics classroom. Between the power of brand awareness, social connectedness associated with brands, and the relevance of the #teamBRAND that is now all over Twitter, it made perfect sense to implement #TeamPhysics for the year--and that's just what I did.<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b style="color: #990000;">Part 2: </b><b><span style="color: #990000;">What's a <u>classroom brand</u>?</span></b> </li>
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When I think of a product brand, as described and illustrated above, I think about all the products, ideas, and experiences that are associated with that brand. Nike, <i>Just Do It, </i>is a way of thinking as much as it is a pair of shoes or the feeling of accomplishment associated with sports performance.<br />
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When I think of how I would define a <i>classroom brand</i>, it doesn't look much different. A <b>classroom brand</b> is that which represents all that your classroom stands for--the ideas, experiences, norms, values, interactions, structure, and connectedness. For me, a classroom brand simply embodies what I want my classroom culture to be. That's why TeamPhysics was the perfect brand for my classroom. TeamPhysics is more than a mere moniker; it's more than a group; it's more than a logo; it's more than a hashtag. All of those things are necessary parts of it, but the essence of TeamPhysics is more than just the sum of its parts. <br />
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The motivation to create a classroom brand was compelling and from many sources, but the steps to implement a classroom brand were less clear. After lots of planning, I outlined <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/08/8-steps-to-engineer-your-classroom-brand.html" target="_blank">8 fundamental steps</a> that were necessary for me to put the classroom brand idea into action. From children's cereal to university athletics to political campaigns, branding is a powerful mechanism for bringing people together and communicating. Branding and brand recognition has a strong appeal to people because it helps them to easily form associations between ideas, experiences, and products to a brand. It makes perfect sense to leverage this in the classroom and bring about a classroom brand to help students form the associations necessary for successful experience in a class.<br />
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<u><span style="font-size: large;">BRAND YOUR CLASSROOM </span></u></div>
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Gary G. Abud, Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10082000053180484544noreply@blogger.com41tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-44980555084224023392012-08-16T15:47:00.000-04:002012-08-16T15:47:17.065-04:00#ModChem Day 15<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: small;">Modeler's Log, Day 15--</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://images.wikia.com/glee/images/9/96/Disappointed.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://images.wikia.com/glee/images/9/96/Disappointed.jpg" height="130" width="200" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>"I'm so sad to see #ModChem12 end!"</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Way back on <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/modchem-day-1.html" target="_blank">day 1</a>, some of us had no knowledge of what <a href="http://modelinginstruction.org/" target="_blank">Modeling Instruction</a> even was, while others had previously completed workshops in physics and thought we knew what to expect here in the chemistry workshop. Here we are now--three weeks from where we started; 15 days of instruction and nine full units of chemistry models later. After completing the Modeling Chemistry Institute at<a href="http://mansfield.edu/" target="_blank"> Mansfield University</a>, made possible by <a href="http://www.corning.com/about_us/index.aspx" target="_blank">Corning Inc.</a>, I can confidently say that all of the participants have left better teachers than we came. Everyone came away with something meaningful; it's sad to see the workshop come to a close. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">This last workshop day did not include any new content, because we finished the last of the nine units on <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/08/modchem-day-14.html" target="_blank">day 14</a>. Though everyone would have loved to get into more chemistry content, today was about tying up loose ends and reflecting on the workshop. The conclusion of the
workshop started by activating our <a href="http://modelinginstruction.org/about/membership-required/?wlfrom=%2Fteachers%2Fresources%2F" target="_blank">American Modeling Teachers Association</a> and getting a brief tour of the website. We subsequently moved on to one final questioning simulation, and then we put the whiteboards away for the last time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJjYr5ISGHrLI_Qn7OSplCI4SEuEZehdGwJBVMytG-fmAncGzFzxlUutgDunyu2ntYchpNy4ZbFPBr6LScRilbsqsBtCcXbT4ntcQz35yiN5WHm60pzDv8L7aYSGpq0a5mT-FFSPSIKMh5/s1600/Photo+Jul+27,+8+42+03+AM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJjYr5ISGHrLI_Qn7OSplCI4SEuEZehdGwJBVMytG-fmAncGzFzxlUutgDunyu2ntYchpNy4ZbFPBr6LScRilbsqsBtCcXbT4ntcQz35yiN5WHm60pzDv8L7aYSGpq0a5mT-FFSPSIKMh5/s1600/Photo+Jul+27,+8+42+03+AM.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a>Our final whiteboarding practice session include more practice with the different stoichiometry applications from unit 9. Everyone acknowledge how much more comfortable we felt with the <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2011/07/making-thinking-visible-using.html" target="_blank">whiteboarding process</a> at this point. We were now able to give some helpful feedback even about the process itself. The subtleties of whiteboard questioning were now within perspective. From this last session, we noted that it is important to ask open-ended questions, not just open-spaced questions. We found this subtle difference in how we viewed leading questions. What we thought were leading students to discuss an idea more were actually just leading them to a single answer via fill-in-blank <span id="goog_1601837034"></span><span id="goog_1601837035"></span>questions from the teacher, e.g., "The quantity that helps us to relate the number of grams to the number of moles of a substance is ________?" This doesn't work very well. Instead, consider a more constructed response prompt: "How do we relate the <i>how much</i> to the <i>how many</i> for a substance?" The other two important points from our feedback pertained to allowing proper 'wait time' for student responses before following up and cautioning teachers about answering their own questions. Neither of these practices foster good whiteboard discussions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Next, we cleaned off the whiteboards and tidied up the lab for the last time in this workshop and it was time to take our post-test of the <a href="http://www.imarksweb.net/book/assessmet+in+chemistry+concepts/" target="_blank">Assessment of Basic Chemistry Concepts (ABCC)</a>. After looking at the questions on the ABCC for a second time after learning all the models in each unit, I have a much better sense of how my own thinking about matter and energy have changed. This assessment should be given as early in the year as possible, especially before you begin teaching the content of the modeling chemistry units, to students. The objective here is not for the assessment to be part of students' grade in the course but to yield a measurement of how much they learned over the course of the term and how well the instruction succeeded in steering students to correct lines of thinking. My experience in modeling physics using the <a href="http://www.flaguide.org/tools/diagnostic/force_concept_inventory.php" target="_blank">Force Concept Inventory (FCI)</a>, as well as discussion of the chemistry concepts inventory, has helped me foresee how the ABCC will work into my chemistry teaching. At the end of the first week of school, I will give the assessment to students, it will be scored to see what their preconceptions are, but the grade will not be counted. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Then, after we have finished all nine units in the curriculum, students will again take the assessment (not to be counted into their grade) and the results compared to their first attempt. The difference between the pre-test and post-test scores on the concept inventory can help see student gains in learning, e.g., if a student scores 15/27 on pre-test and 21/27 on post-test. To dive deeper into the data, a "percent yield" of sorts can be determined for each student. This is where you take a student's actual score change compared to their possible score change. Starting with a pre-test score, say 15/27 questions answered correctly, generate a 'potential gain' as the difference from highest possible score--in this case, a 12 question difference. Then, upon completing the post-test, say the student scored 21/27. You can determine that their 'actual gain' was 6 out of a possible 12 potentially, or 50% score change "yield." This more in-depth examination of scores keeps the playing field level. It compares students to themselves instead of to each other. This way two students who each had a 3-question improvement can be compared. For example, let's say that one student scored a 4/27 on the pre-test and had a 3-question improvement while the other scored 24/27 on pre-test and had a 3-question improvement. With just the change in score, the comparison would be meaningless, but with a comparison to <i>what each student could have scored,</i> the 3-question improvement becomes much more telling. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.videomaker.com/content/images/article/14911/main.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.videomaker.com/content/images/article/14911/main.jpg" height="160" width="200" /></a>After we finished with the ABCC, it was time to do course evaluations, which interestingly had two components: 1) rating the quality of the workshop itself; and, 2) rating your pedagogical content knowledge in a variety of categories before and after the workshop. The latter of these two components really encouraged you to reflect on what you learned in the workshop and how it will influence your teaching. It had questions asking you to rate the frequency with which you used a variety of teaching techniques, e.g., student-designed experiments, textbook reading & problem sets, discussions, lectures, etc. both <i>before</i> and <i>after </i>the workshop. This way of surveying teachers could really help a person to realize just how much their teaching has been impacted by this workshop.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">After I finished my survey, there were a few minutes until the rest of the group was done; so, I did some reflecting about my own teaching practice and how this workshop has influenced what I will do in the future. I thought about the big take-aways from #modchem2012. For each participant, this list might be different, but for me, the following are my top five hallmarks of the workshop:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Modeling instruction is the coolest and most comprehensive student-centered pedagogy in science</b></span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I've always been a proponent of helping students to discover (or rediscover) things for themselves in a class. What fun is there in just telling them when they can be put in a situation to draw their own conclusions? I was unsure prior to this workshop of how this could be done with chemistry concepts. I was pleasantly surprised to see that everything from atomic particles to stoichiometry to thermochemistry to the gas laws could be developed with students without having to resort to telling. </span></blockquote>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Teaching energy through storage and transfer representations (see <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/modchem-day-6.html" target="_blank">day 6</a>)</b></span></li>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The treatment of energy in modeling instruction is somewhat uniform across the disciplines. It is heavily influenced by Gregg Swackhamer's <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/aad3fq4mhiqaq9r/CognitiveResources-Energy.pdf" target="_blank">Cognitive Resources for Understanding Energy.</a> It was very nice to see how the energy associated with chemical reactions, temperature shifts, and phase changes was treated together. This kept energy connected to matter, as it should be, and made the relationships between physical and chemical changes easy to explain in terms of energy.</span></blockquote>
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<li><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Focus on process, not just answers </b></span></li>
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<span style="font-size: small;">All too often, the study of chemistry is reduced to problem-answer situations, mostly of the quantitative nature; thus, chemistry class often looks to students like math class--fragmented, based on calculations, and all about the answers. Though calculations are involved, and though math is a tool to be used in chemistry, this is far from the whole story. In treating chemistry teaching and learning like math class, and in focusing so much on the answers, students can lose sight of the overarching concepts, themes, and physical context of chemistry. Modeling instruction seeks to shift the paradigm from answer-focused to process-oriented teaching and learning. The belief is that with a focus on the process, the answers will naturally come; in contrast, however, when the focus is on the answers, the process is obscured. </span></blockquote>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Sequence in the chemistry curriculum follows a historical timeline</b></span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Most chemistry textbooks, and even more chemistry curricula, will treat the historical timeline of chemistry and the development of the model of the atom in a single unit or chapter. It is typically taught, if at all, as a set of bullet points on a timeline with little emphasis on its importance to the study of chemistry. After the respects are (briefly) paid to the chemists who have gone before, attention turns to concluding the whole of chemistry based not on empirical evidence but on rote fact. The sequence of the units in the modeling curriculum framework honors the historical development, not simply out of reverence, because it yields an empirical context for the understanding of chemical concepts. </span></blockquote>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Discrepant events </b></span></li>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I love using discrepant events in my physics classes, and the<a href="http://bcramond.myweb.uga.edu/home/DiscrepantEvents.htm" target="_blank"> Motivational Power of Discrepant Events</a> has been chronicled in many disciplines, but it wasn't clear how I would be able to use this powerful teaching technique in chemistry. We saw several in the workshop, and there are plenty of resources for them out on the Internet. If you want to find out about discrepant events in chemistry, you can get some inspiration from <a href="http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiments/" target="_blank">Steve Spangler</a> and some other ideas are available in the resources of this <a href="http://www.chemistryinquiry.com/fun_chemistry_links.htm" target="_blank">inquiry-based chemistry page</a>. Ultimately, discrepant events only hold power if they are student-centered and allow pupils to engage with the event in their own personal way so as to reflect on their preconceptions. The <a href="http://saiwood.com/the-conceptual-change-model/" target="_blank">conceptual change model</a> is very explicit about students <i>exposing and confronting</i> their beliefs.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: small;">There once was a master at discrepant event teaching in science, and he had a television show. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Herbert" target="_blank">Don Herbert, a.k.a. Mr. Wizard</a>, had perhaps the most well-known reputation for science in the 20th century. Mr. Wizard does a classic discrepant event with water volume that could fit into any chemistry course, and it of course is available on YouTube. Now, keep in mind that whoever posted this video on YouTube decided to do a little model deployment of their own with Mr. Wizard's lesson, applying the concept to polar ice caps melting, but feel free to appreciate the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKiq5EwkzDg" target="_blank">clip</a> for its originally intended purpose. For your viewing pleasure, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKiq5EwkzDg" target="_blank">here</a> it is:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Looking back on the workshop, it took some time for everyone to find their groove with the content and pedagogy; but in the end, everyone seemed to have
caught on to what Modeling Instruction is trying to accomplish with
chemistry. All of our questions were answered and finally, we can say, "<i>now</i>, <i>we get it!"</i></span></div>
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Gary G. Abud, Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10082000053180484544noreply@blogger.com180tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-41352349130846509862012-08-09T13:11:00.001-04:002012-08-09T13:11:17.823-04:00#ModChem Day 14<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Modeler's Log, Day 14--<br />
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Today is penultimate day of the 2012 #ModChem workshop, but we are not slated to start our <i>cool down</i> at all. From the rich conversation stemmed by Carl Wenning's musings on inquiry instruction to finishing up the last units of the modeling curriculum framework, today was large.<br />
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Our last article discussion was today, and it featured Carl Wenning's work on <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/1cb5lqmlunx5vor/minimizing_resistance.pdf" target="_blank">resistance to inquiry-oriented (modeling) instruction.</a> This is a <b>must read</b> for those beginning with modeling instruction in their classrooms, especially those first introducing it at their school or district. Most everyone new to modeling instruction, or any methodological approach of student-centered teaching, has anticipations or apprehensions about implementing it in their classrooms for the first time. This article characterizes some of the more common aspects of resistance that teachers will encounter from students, parents, administrators, and even educator colleagues. Wenning also discusses some features of how inquiry-based instruction can and should be interpreted, but meanwhile stresses the importance of the classroom climate setting in communicating the intended perception of an inquiry-oriented classroom. <br />
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Some of us in the workshop have previous experience with <a href="http://vimeo.com/channels/modelingphysics" target="_blank">modeling instruction in physics</a>, <a href="http://www.pogil.org/about" target="_blank">POGIL</a>, or some other type of inquiry-based instruction, which makes us more comfortable moving modeling chemistry into our classrooms; however, those who are coming into modeling instruction in chemistry from a more traditional background emphasized concerned feelings and anticipations for the coming year about implementing modeling instruction. Reading what Wenning had documented was a realistic projection of what teachers can expect with introducing modeling instruction into their science classroom. Our conversation about the article focused on three key ideas: what sorts of resistance to expect, how to deal with that resistance, and how to create the optimal classroom climate for a successful inquiry-based experience.<br />
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Aside from resistance to the instructional approach, other general concerns from teachers included:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>How best to create a safe and inviting environment for participation and intellectual risk-taking</li>
<li>Dealing with absences in a classroom where being present is EVERYTHING</li>
<li>Sequencing concerns in comparisons to other teachers' classes or curriculum maps </li>
<li>Common assessments and high-stakes state tests; teacher evaluation data </li>
<li>First day of school activities to help set the classroom climate</li>
</ul>
There are, perhaps fortunately, no definitive ways to ease all of the above mentioned concerns. Many of these concerns are manifestations of philosophical views, paradigm stagnation, and general 'fear of the unknown.' Still, whether stemming from externally exerted forces or self-created, these concerns are genuine. Ultimately, it boils down to the educational philosophy of the classroom teacher and the school paradigm for teaching and learning. Here are questions to ask yourself, which can help identify your philosophy to address these kinds of concerns when considering inquiry-oriented instruction:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Who is the educated person?</li>
<li>What is good teaching? </li>
<li>What is learning?</li>
<li>What knowledge or skill is worth knowing?</li>
<li>What is the ultimate goal of your classroom for all students?</li>
</ul>
The remainder of our discourse focused on first day and first week activities to foster the environment in your classroom necessary for successful modeling instruction. No matter what you choose to do to introduce your class to students in the first days of the school year, it is critical that you make explicit the type of climate and environment that will be essential to the inquiry-oriented instructional style students will experience.<br />
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My personal take on how to reveal to students <i>how they will be learning</i> in my modeling classroom is a <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/08/activities-to-create-team-classroom.html" target="_blank">series of activities</a> that span the first week of school. Dedicated content exploration doesn't officially begin until week 2 in my classroom. I view modeling instruction science class like a sport, and my students as a team, which is why it is so important for me to invest in team building in the first days of school. Perhaps the most well-known team-building exercise is the <a href="http://marshmallowchallenge.com/Instructions.html" target="_blank">Marshmallow Challenge</a> by Tom Wujec. It really is a perfect example, in my estimation, of how learning will feel to students in a modeling classroom. Since it is a very positive experience for most, and a very telling example of focusing on process instead of product, this activity is an essential introduction to my class.<br />
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Other ideas for team building activities will be discussed in more detail in a separate dedicated <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/08/activities-to-create-team-classroom.html" target="_blank">post</a>.<br />
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<b><i>Now, on to the concluding content of the modeling </i><i>chemistry workshop</i><i>!!</i></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbqZ0DjEx074NBAVXmcnuqYHtYpXZOehcfYKQDwODfMh7FCisiV1HviLQz9FONRChiU3fgsi_BRSHNc2IdqvA92zZCTB_XJTMuKTK3L0fOaCGLtZ9T8kQk72XR0Ol3JeQ-uQ4fdsDjo83c/s1600/Photo+Jul+25,+2+00+20+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbqZ0DjEx074NBAVXmcnuqYHtYpXZOehcfYKQDwODfMh7FCisiV1HviLQz9FONRChiU3fgsi_BRSHNc2IdqvA92zZCTB_XJTMuKTK3L0fOaCGLtZ9T8kQk72XR0Ol3JeQ-uQ4fdsDjo83c/s1600/Photo+Jul+25,+2+00+20+PM.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a>Unit 8 finished with a more detailed investigation of using the <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/gabud/before-change-after-bca-tables-for-stoichiometry" target="_blank">BCA table method</a> for limiting reactant and percent yield stoichiometry problems. The BCA approach make these typically more challenging problem types more manageable to students and set them up for confidence in their problem solving strategy in stoichiometry labs and context-rich problems. Based on the use of the balanced chemical equation to yield "<a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2011/08/for-every-speak-cognitive-approach-to.html" target="_blank">for every</a>" statements about the relationship between required moles of reactants, students can readily determine the limiting reactant in a reaction process and proceed to predict a theoretical yield of product based on that amount. Again, the BCA approach empowers students to think through a stoichiometry problem and not merely solve it blindly using algorithms.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm9_k56dLF_RN8XogTiSx_Gzy4TWQ3YZQP8YNtpewDytYvWtVpWlX9JB2fs5xrgURS4pUJMACaxl1eO5e6-3z7AR2yr55Vsy45L40GxIS6Ss6tqtXQxqFovaMbRE6x5F_d9mSWClHmHPxg/s1600/Photo+Jul+26,+11+20+57+AM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm9_k56dLF_RN8XogTiSx_Gzy4TWQ3YZQP8YNtpewDytYvWtVpWlX9JB2fs5xrgURS4pUJMACaxl1eO5e6-3z7AR2yr55Vsy45L40GxIS6Ss6tqtXQxqFovaMbRE6x5F_d9mSWClHmHPxg/s1600/Photo+Jul+26,+11+20+57+AM.jpg" height="200" width="150" /></a>For the first time in the workshop, and to bring unit 8 to a close, we looked at and discussed the unit 8 assessment to scrutinize the types of questions asked and the setup of the assessments themselves in the modeling materials. This sparked a larger discussion about assessment and grading in general, specifically how assessments would look with modeling instruction compared to what we've done with assessments previously in our classrooms. Main features of the comparisons included that assessments in modeling instruction are: skill-based, shorter, mainly constructed response, and focused more on conceptual understanding. Some teachers find this manner of assessment to be vastly different than what they are used to with longer multiple choice tests. Ultimately, modeling instruction has clearly defined skill-based learning goals for students, e.g., standards, and the assessments match those standards precisely. When we really looked at the materials more closely, we realized that everything from labs to homework to assessments coherently centers around the standards. This makes perfect sense to keep things consistent and focused on learning. The next step was how to grade in a course like this: <a href="http://shawncornally.com/wordpress/?page_id=114" target="_blank">points-based or standards-based</a>? <a href="http://www.acorn-online.com/joomla15/lewisboroledger/community/schools/104087-rethinking-grading.html" target="_blank">Students will logically seek to reflect on grading practices</a>, too, once they encounter a teaching and learning system that doesn't seem to match up with points. We won't get into grading too much more here, but I will say it poured over into dinner conversation with everyone later on after the workshop day ended. It is something everyone must rethink when they change their teaching practices. <i>There's so much to grading and assessment that I have personally altered in my classroom since committing to modeling instruction that it will require its own <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-journey-to-standards-based-grading.html" target="_blank">post</a>, if not posts, to explain!</i><br />
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After lunch, it was on to unit 9 - applications and extensions of stoichiometry - where we will conclude our modeling chemistry curriculum. The last unit in our sequence sounds like it's focused exclusively <i>on</i> stoichiometry, but it is actually <i>around</i> stoichiometry. The topics of study in this unit include partial pressures and mole fraction, molar volume and the ideal gas law, molar concentration and solution chemistry, and heat of combustion and thermochemistry. Each of these topics has the potential to be its own unit, but they are all introduced together here with the central theme of ways of "finding moles." Since students are now facile with BCA tables, providing multiple ways to determine moles in various settings or process can create the context to make advanced introductory chemistry topics more accessible. It is during or following unit 9 where the curriculum can branch off into other extensions of stoichiometry, such as acid-base, kinetics, equilibrium, or electrochemistry. We whiteboarded questions from homework assignments in each of these topic areas to practice our questioning and discussion skills one last time. </div>
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<i>**SPECIAL NOTE** </i></div>
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<i style="color: purple;">Some of these photos contain whiteboards with deliberately embedded mistakes. </i></div>
<ul><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi__kUPps4cEXVEbx3tofCcZ3wQELd-oPPN-cG7f1nwo2JhSlpbojItIV1PyfUPculZ3BZbYAChCyEex3gnd7AtN6yn3F29JsZH4njL8ZS7xXy-SAVp8om4qIBE3wXmDK99oHuSUykD4b9V/s1600/Photo+Jul+26,+3+40+45+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi__kUPps4cEXVEbx3tofCcZ3wQELd-oPPN-cG7f1nwo2JhSlpbojItIV1PyfUPculZ3BZbYAChCyEex3gnd7AtN6yn3F29JsZH4njL8ZS7xXy-SAVp8om4qIBE3wXmDK99oHuSUykD4b9V/s1600/Photo+Jul+26,+3+40+45+PM.jpg" height="150" style="cursor: move;" width="200" /></a>
<li>Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures & Ideal Gas Law - keeping with <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/modchem-day-5.html" target="_blank">the PTVn table method of unit 2</a>, we introduced the gas constant, "R," and the ideal gas law. Particle diagrams to represent what was happening were kept an essential part of problem solving considerations here as well. In this topic, we did a molar volume of gas lab to determine the 22.4L/mol relationship. </li>
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<ul><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicyD4IyOCf8nh1XYiNsQhJVbEGQ2GAnpxB08PlgjzNeP25y6NRlOTegrHbm6LLnKLajt5yvXnphSuWSLg6-MxxrqznPt3VNNdV1aNDhNMj7xjPoVdbLBDsjVyHRq8N8tj24weM6Q2ehU_L/s1600/Photo+Jul+27,+8+41+48+AM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicyD4IyOCf8nh1XYiNsQhJVbEGQ2GAnpxB08PlgjzNeP25y6NRlOTegrHbm6LLnKLajt5yvXnphSuWSLg6-MxxrqznPt3VNNdV1aNDhNMj7xjPoVdbLBDsjVyHRq8N8tj24weM6Q2ehU_L/s1600/Photo+Jul+27,+8+41+48+AM.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a>
<li>Heat of Combustion & Thermochemistry - treating energy as a reactant or product to include in the balanced chemical reaction, we were able to use stoichiometry approaches to relate moles to energy transferred during endothermic and exothermic reactions. In this topic, we did a calorimetry lab to find out exactly how much energy was associated with the combustion of one mole of a substance. </li>
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<ul><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgikBvBEaZi9KDNPHfU4-3X8KhJoLTHHC7HTO_p62ywMLNXkrQpBxhnzJg8Yq53IpBWAhg4SGKdSBoEePyMIKyEFi8zBjHMpjfTdwEqf1lq9rEzylT0aGVzzrBdqsjDe6IxpqwZTq-S2zF/s1600/Photo+Jul+27,+8+41+40+AM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgikBvBEaZi9KDNPHfU4-3X8KhJoLTHHC7HTO_p62ywMLNXkrQpBxhnzJg8Yq53IpBWAhg4SGKdSBoEePyMIKyEFi8zBjHMpjfTdwEqf1lq9rEzylT0aGVzzrBdqsjDe6IxpqwZTq-S2zF/s1600/Photo+Jul+27,+8+41+40+AM.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a>
<li>Molar Concentration of Solutions - keeping the focus around moles, the BCA tables and solution volume can be easily connected to make molarity accessible to students. Here you can see that a pictorial representation, using rectangular areas with length=volume & width=moles, for molarity creates a visual cue for thinking about solutions or dilutions. </li>
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<i> Two of the biggest take-home messages of the entire workshop, which
have been creeping up all along, finally manifested themselves during
units 8 and 9:</i></div>
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<u><b>Take-Home Messages:</b></u></div>
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1)
Many first year chemistry course quantitative topics are applications
of stoichiometry, treat them in terms of being advanced methods of
determining moles for the purpose of doing stoichiometry. For example,
thermochemistry topics relate energy transfers to moles; acid-base
relates pH to moles; electrochemistry relates electron transfers to
moles. If students can make the connections between skills they already
have learned with stoichiometry to other topics, then those otherwise
nebulous second-semester topics can be more easily assimilated into
students' conceptual understanding. This approach of treating advanced
topics as <i>applications of stoichiometry</i> demystifies the calculations and helps students to organize their learning around those topics.</div>
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2) Energy is <b>not</b>
a stand-alone unit in chemistry and shouldn't be treated in isolation
from other topics or ideas. This is one area where the modeling
chemistry approach shines. Energy is not just something learned about in
one, or maybe two, topic studies in a chemistry course; rather, the
treatment of energy is done in the context of almost all other topics.
This helps students to keep a coherent view of energy in chemical
processes and have the ability to quantify energy more readily if they
can conceptualize its physical role in a system. This becomes another
powerful skill students can rely upon when encountering new topics. When
they consider the energy flow in a system, they immediately can find
something familiar with which to connect new phenomena. Regardless of
how one chooses to view chemistry teaching, the view of the material
world is typically one of <i>matter and energy</i>. So, shouldn't energy be kept at the forefront of a study of most
chemistry topics?<br />
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</div>Gary G. Abud, Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10082000053180484544noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-23252921266455895002012-07-31T22:14:00.000-04:002012-07-31T22:31:42.397-04:00#ModChem Day 13<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Modeler's Log, Day 13--<br />
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Today, the initial challenge was to create story boards that summarized the model development so far in each unit. The boards were to summarize the model with diagrams, pictures, graphs, but no word explanations. Essentially, a summary in pictures. We did this for units 4-7. Each group took a unit and summarized in on a board and then we presented them to the class to make sure we had a sense of the model development sequence. Kind of like a, "view from 20,000ft.," the model summary boards keep you grounded in the big picture of what's going on in the curriculum.<br />
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<embed flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&hl=en_US&feat=flashalbum&RGB=0x000000&feed=https%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2F109368100533342680188%2Falbumid%2F5771087130616920177%3Falt%3Drss%26kind%3Dphoto%26hl%3Den_US" height="267" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" src="https://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400"></embed> </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtgwWgPNxbmbloSB9qU-kt3Z0vpw0L8aHlD81Ac-XEAT9A_QjIPcS-4mKmPyEC8ZeGKh4zoNA7UHoRI-ETmP-mNAINuXgcLGcnagXPVXeoC8CVtfl7dkzfftumjH0_WEXunVC0E81X-mkT/s1600/Photo+Jul+24,+10+53+59+AM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtgwWgPNxbmbloSB9qU-kt3Z0vpw0L8aHlD81Ac-XEAT9A_QjIPcS-4mKmPyEC8ZeGKh4zoNA7UHoRI-ETmP-mNAINuXgcLGcnagXPVXeoC8CVtfl7dkzfftumjH0_WEXunVC0E81X-mkT/s200/Photo+Jul+24,+10+53+59+AM.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Since we didn't have an article to discuss today, our summary boards led us into a discussion that was philosophical in nature anyway. We discussed <a href="http://www.nwosu.edu/whiteboardreferences" target="_blank">whiteboarding</a> in our classrooms and how, if the students bought in to whiteboarding as we have in the workshop, students would be very self-directed in their whiteboarding practice in class. Whiteboards can even be a sub-plan after a class becomes facile with the technique. Students regularly
have to whiteboard their homework and present to each other when the teacher is there, why stop this practice if there is a substitute teacher? It was suggested that you could simply leave an answer key
to the homework with the sub for students' reference. A student could get to play the role of the
teacher (class might vote to decide who will impersonate the teacher) and have them take photos
of their boards and send to you (on email, twitter, or Google+) just for record. At some point during the year, students will take a more active role in questioning during whiteboard sessions, and they will be able to run a whiteboarding session to go over homework on their own without much, if any, prompting. This <i>is</i> an ultimate goal, to empower the students to be metacognitive enough that they can self-analyze and regulate their own examination of homework solutions and problem-solving strategies.</div>
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Next, it was on to unit 8. This was a dive into the deep end with stoichiometry. We introduced a teaching approach for stoichiometry that is known as the BCA Table. This method is a cognitive approach to tackling stoichiometry problems that will keep students grounded in the balanced equation and what is physically taking place in the reaction. The BCA Table approach is summarized in the following presentation, which is adapted from its original form, by Larry Dukerich:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrmm_DcwPncE74s68pcWjsd9qgR6jP6mljCZnmhbs5us09GAK5OWwbk5w2BcPjJSm44kV74gNC4pxOFzKY-3xUlxEST4TG9KM0SmHFRtqFTpdffvgU8aAyifaoxHoUbNmuHKQU-71zdvDa/s640/blogger-image-1093305690.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrmm_DcwPncE74s68pcWjsd9qgR6jP6mljCZnmhbs5us09GAK5OWwbk5w2BcPjJSm44kV74gNC4pxOFzKY-3xUlxEST4TG9KM0SmHFRtqFTpdffvgU8aAyifaoxHoUbNmuHKQU-71zdvDa/s200/blogger-image-1093305690.jpg" width="200" /></a>The unit 8 paradigm lab experiment for unit 8 places a copper wire into a silver nitrate solution. This was another multi-day wet lab, the first being the <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/modchem-day-11.html" target="_blank">iron nail lab</a> from <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/modchem-day-11.html" target="_blank">day 11,</a> where it's necessary to allow the reaction some time over more than one class period to proceed. Connecting this lab to previously learned content, models, and skills consists of having students writing the balanced equation for the reaction and predicting the products based on a model for this type of reaction. As it turns out, students will write two possible reactions that could take place, based on the possible ions of copper that could be present in solution. This leads students to inquire how they might determine which reaction actually takes place. Again, as with the the <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/modchem-day-11.html" target="_blank">iron nail lab</a> from <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/modchem-day-11.html" target="_blank">day 11,</a> students will be able to determine which reaction took place empirically based on the molar ratio of solid products and reactants in their experiment. It is important that during pre-lab, students are encouraged to keep track of mass data for <b>all</b> the solids in the lab and not just the two metals; both of the reactants (copper and undissolved silver nitrate) and the metal product (silver.)<br />
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<embed flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&hl=en_US&feat=flashalbum&RGB=0x000000&feed=https%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2F109368100533342680188%2Falbumid%2F5771087349282960465%3Falt%3Drss%26kind%3Dphoto%26hl%3Den_US" height="267" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" src="https://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400"></embed></div>
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This lab debrief can take a variety of directions, because so much precision is required in the technique of isolating the solid silver product, that uncertainty and lab technique could become a tangential focus of the discussion; however, it is important (as with any lab debrief) that the main focus is kept at the forefront of discussion. In this case, the main objective is to determine which reaction physically took place based on empirical evidence. Though uncertainty in measurement & calculation, as well as technique and sources of uncertainty are all points that <i>should</i> be considered in this lab debrief, don't allow them to become the main points. To initiate discussion, have all groups put their data into a single spreadsheet that can be displayed for the entire class to see at once. Have students report their molar ratios of copper:silver and silver nitrate:silver. Ask them to analyze the data for patterns and meaning, but to also consider what was physically happening in the reaction. Why didn't the reaction just continue making more silver; what made it stop? Focus again on the distinction between how many (mole ratios) and how much (mass ratios.) Keep students in perspective of the balanced reactions they wrote in pre-lab. It is the case that either of the following reactions took place, based on either the copper (i) or copper (ii) ion, respectively:<br />
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Cu<sub>(s)</sub> + AgNO<sub>3(aq)</sub> = CuNO<sub>3</sub><sub>(aq)</sub> + Ag<sub>(s)</sub></div>
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<sub>--OR-- </sub> <b><b> </b></b></div>
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Cu<sub>(s)</sub> + <b>2</b>AgNO<sub>3(aq)</sub> = Cu(NO<sub>3</sub>)<sub>2(aq)</sub> + <b>2</b>Ag<sub>(s)</sub></div>
<sub> </sub> <b><b> </b></b><br />
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Based on the data, they should be pointed to consider which reactant to base their calculations of predicted amount of product on. Though they might choose either reactant, which amount can they <i>be certain</i> <i>of</i> in their calculations? Do they know that their mass of copper is <i>all </i>the copper that reacted? How about the silver? The reactant to product ratios, which they saw in previous labs can help determine how much reactant was used up and which reaction took place, can help to resolve this issue. They will inevitably see that silver nitrate was mostly (if not completely) used up in the reaction because the mole ratio of silver nitrate to silver they measured is about 1:1; and according to either possible balanced equation for the reaction, the silver nitrate to silver ratio <i>should be </i>1:1. That means a close to 1:1 ratio of silver nitrate to silver in the lab implies their amount has a good degree of certainty for basing calculations upon. Going forward, they can base their calculations on the silver nitrate used in the reaction to predict how much copper <i>would have been used</i> in the reaction and then compare that to the amount of copper used they actually measured. When they see this comes out fairly close, they can then use the copper to silver ratio to determine which reaction took place.<b><b></b></b></div>
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Just like the discussion section of a traditional lab report, the post-lab discussion and debrief for this experiment is <i>very</i> meaty and should not be taken lightly. It is the chance to introduce the terminology <u>limiting reactant</u>, <u>excess reactant</u>, and <u>percent yield</u> in the context of the lab and their empirical data. Once they have a sense for the terms, and they've arrived at which reaction took place, they can calculate a percent yield for their experiment and discuss uncertainties in the lab. Once the lab objective has been achieved, students should conclude that it doesn't matter how much you use of the reactants, it will still proceed according to the balanced equation. This is the anchoring principle that they should have going forward into stoichiometry.<br />
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Once we finished our lab debrief, we practiced whiteboard questioning with BCA table method of solving stoichiometry problems. Many of us have really gotten the hang of questioning and whiteboard sessions after 12 days, and so we were ready today for some advanced techniques. We practiced questioning correctly done boards and differentiating between <i>silly mistakes</i> (e.e., accidentally omitting a 2 subscript on hydrogen gas to make it diatomic in an equation when the student knows better) compared to errors of major conceptual understanding. We agreed that not all whiteboards are created equal, nor do they all have errors or the same type of errors. Thus, we need to be prepared for all the possibilities. </div>
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We also discussed including other students in the questioning process, even going to the length that the teacher can whiteboard a problem solution and present it to the class and students can question them. The most advanced technique anyone had ever tried was to play the <a href="http://kellyoshea.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/whiteboarding-mistake-game-a-guide/" target="_blank">Mistake Game</a> (explained in detail by the amazing <a href="https://twitter.com/kellyoshea" target="_blank">Kelly O'Shea</a>) where students purposefully (or accidentally even) embed mistakes into their whiteboard solutions and other students have to try and elucidate their error during presentation through questioning and discussion. Several other <a href="http://bowmandickson.com/2011/11/05/experiments-with-math-whiteboarding/" target="_blank">advanced techniques for whiteboards </a>in the classroom were discussed and considered, including some from a "whiteboard ninja" named <a href="https://twitter.com/bowmanimal" target="_blank">Bowman Dickson.</a><br />
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Definitely one of the most cerebral days in the workshop thus far. With unit summary boards, the introduction of stoichiometry, the BCA Table method, a limiting reactant lab done through inquiry, and advanced whiteboarding techniques, this was a modeling pentathlon for sure, but it was empowering and insightful nonetheless. Stoichiometry is one of the most nettlesome content topics to teach students and often becomes the make-it-or-break-it moment in many students' introductory chemistry experiences. Having a better way to teach stoichiometry is greatly encouraging!<b><b> </b></b><br />
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<b><b>Two days left to go; home stretch, here we come!!</b></b></div>
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</b></b></div>Gary G. Abud, Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10082000053180484544noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-42922344714208763412012-07-30T14:23:00.000-04:002012-07-30T18:10:33.074-04:00#ModChem Day 12<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Modeler's Log, Day 12--<br />
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A major endeavor of the modeling methodology of science instruction is to address and correct student misconceptions about science ideas. On <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/modchem-day-8.html" target="_blank">day 8</a>, we read an extensive <a href="http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:7XLNNGUv2IIJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=0,33&as_vis=1" target="_blank">article</a> by Vanessa Barker about the variety of misconceptions that students have about chemistry. We continued today in the direction of misconceptions but narrowing our focus to students' ideas about energy. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHVoN5vfptR2yxx8PRKJKMIJ1HD7I8CXj7cGFrw2Tghz5NzdhwGaSg7jCVgkXMQUKdqcabNI3F2MpKlCP3BtPG7Pib8_xB3cCNZNRPKfPIoZgNDfsRENKQCtJUrQCkezWhjPsxXnTBwBZ2/s1600/pixie-stix.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHVoN5vfptR2yxx8PRKJKMIJ1HD7I8CXj7cGFrw2Tghz5NzdhwGaSg7jCVgkXMQUKdqcabNI3F2MpKlCP3BtPG7Pib8_xB3cCNZNRPKfPIoZgNDfsRENKQCtJUrQCkezWhjPsxXnTBwBZ2/s200/pixie-stix.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
William Galley's article "<a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ed081p523" target="_blank">Exothermic Bond Breaking</a>" chronicles persistent misconceptions of energetics by students in a variety of science classroom settings. Galley points to misrepresentation by science textbooks and ineffective instructional practices as being sources of the disinformation that "energy is released when chemical bonds are broken." This leads to what we fondly called the 'Pixie Stick Model' of energy, which many students are led to hold based on instruction in high school biology (and sometimes chemistry) courses. This misconceived understanding of energy views chemical bonds, such as those in the "high-energy phosphate bonds of ATP," like Pixie Sticks. When the Pixie Stick bond is "broken," the energy is "released" like the crystals inside of the Pixie Stick. It is misleading to students that bonds are talked about as physical objects that can "contain" energy, when it actually is the case that the bond is not a physical object but rather an interaction between electric fields, where the energy is really stored.<br />
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We noted from the article that traditional language used to describe chemical bonds, especially the language associated with energy molecules in biology courses, can be attributed to this inaccurate view. We all agreed that we cannot use language that makes it seem like bonds "store energy" or that "energy is liberated upon cleaving the high-energy bonds of ATP" in biology courses, but also that we need to be cognizant of these preconceptions when students enter high school chemistry courses.<br />
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Instead, we must do a better instructional job of helping students to realize that it takes energy to break bonds and can release energy when bonds are created. In the end, there really needs to be a comprehensive model that takes into account both bond making, bond breaking, and the net energy transfer after a chemical reaction is completed. Focusing on energy transfer in chemical reactions proves, according to Galley's article and the Modeling Instruction research, far more useful in communicating a coherent view of energy. Galley also promotes schematic diagrams to represent the energy transfer in systems, which he describes happens more frequently in college-level chemistry courses. Other recommendations from Galley include, teaching the difference in bond energy between substances more explicitly, as well as better communicating that the bond energy refers to energy required to break a bond. These changes can make clear that it takes energy to break bonds and releases energy to make bonds; therefore, it's the net energy that really determines the exothermic vs. endothermic descriptor of a chemical reaction. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLxo0pVFFQ5lwtu5Ekkx4Pv0fpcw_rmglQ_60pmOwE9AyfeTP2uC21kmkCoImWXTVPgd7V_3c4Fd6ObRG3vKXQFAF9peMI1vNAMtTzQoadpyqFHJDRQMZ9OYl0Ao4wew2uBGlVjkyS4TEi/s640/blogger-image-1282958977.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLxo0pVFFQ5lwtu5Ekkx4Pv0fpcw_rmglQ_60pmOwE9AyfeTP2uC21kmkCoImWXTVPgd7V_3c4Fd6ObRG3vKXQFAF9peMI1vNAMtTzQoadpyqFHJDRQMZ9OYl0Ao4wew2uBGlVjkyS4TEi/s200/blogger-image-1282958977.jpg" width="200" /></a>Following the conclusion of our article discussion, we practiced whiteboard questioning with balancing chemical equations and representing the balanced reactions with particle diagrams. There are several strategies out there to balance chemical equations, but often it is taught in a way that makes it seem like there are procedural rules that can be algorithmically followed--that isn't always the case. What is the case is that some methods of balancing chemical equations, especially those that do not include particle diagrams, can lead students away from having a concrete conception of what is physically happening in a reaction. All balancing strategies taught in modeling chemistry are accompanied by a particle diagram. This provides a visual basis for self-assessing the correctness of the balanced chemical equation. <br />
Since the modeling method stresses the importance of having a particle view of matter, the diagrams become imperative in balancing reactions. This also keeps students grounded in the model of chemical change that is 'rearrangement of atoms' and thus conservation of matter.<br />
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Our questioning has improved, but one thing that we all noticed in each other was how much we gravitated toward <i>positive feedback</i> in playing the role of teacher questioning students. We all have been encouraged to maintain a good level of praise in the classroom, but it was noted that the object of the praise became unclear to students in some situations and could lead to a false sense of confidence in one's problem-solving strategy. In our debrief, this led to the <a href="http://www.nea.org/home/42298.htm" target="_blank">question of praise in the classroom</a> (2012) and its role in whiteboard questioning sessions. How/when to praise? An interesting technique called, "<a href="http://suite101.com/article/teach-like-a-champion-means-right-is-right-a236262" target="_blank">Right is Right</a>," was brought up from Doug Lemov's <i>Teach Like a Champion</i> book. According to this technique, it is important to hold content/strategy praise until a right answer is presented. Attempting to praise an attempt or effort when a response is inaccurate can mislead students into believing their thinking is sound.<br />
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The praise discussion poured over into a discussion of the classroom climate that would encourage risk-taking and a sense of security. We kept coming back to a notion we arrived at earlier in the course, 'modeling doesn't work if you don't build relationships.' This mantra is essential in making a successful modeling classroom and modeling instruction experience for students. There are many different strategies for building rapport in ones classroom, but everyone must do something that fits their personality and teaching style. Instruction must be personalized and the human element cannot be omitted if you want your class to be a success.<br />
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Next up was a set of reaction lab stations, where students have the chance to observe many different types of reactions and determine the physical signs that a chemical reaction has taken place. By comparing and contrasting the different reaction types they observe, the lab stations can elucidate patterns in chemical reactions to students and give rise to a predictive model for determining products. This takes students into classifying and modeling with equations the different <a href="https://chemistry.twu.edu/tutorial/TypeChemRxSum.html" target="_blank">types of reactions</a>. <br />
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I recalled how I used to teach reaction types, as I was shown to do in my student teaching, which was to model the reaction equation templates as relationships between people. For example, my mentor teacher suggested that a double replacement reaction was just like the TV show <i>Wife Swap.</i> Instead of writing out AB + CD --> AD + BC, I used to draw out stick figure couples of husbands and wives, then show the swapped couples! Though it was laughable and memorable, it didn't really make clear anything chemical about the reactions for most students. When I discussed this former approach with my fellow workshop participants, we decided that was poor practice because it personified chemistry. Be careful with '<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Periodic-Table-Elements-Style/dp/0753460858" target="_blank">personifying elements</a>' to students; though it might be memorable in a story-like way, it can tend to oversimplify, or even mislead students about, the concepts.<br />
I am still entertained, however, with this personification of elements and reactions by the <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/" target="_blank">Marie Curie Fellowship</a>. Just for fun, here it is:<br />
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Finally on the day, we took our balanced equations and looked for a way to represent energy in reactions. Based on our Galley article reading, and inspired by our previous treatment of energy from <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/modchem-day-6.html" target="_blank">day 6</a>, we chose to follow our established conventions in the LOL diagrams to represent chemical energy transfer. We brainstormed how we could characterize the difference between exothermic and endothermic reactions in sequence with our modeling curriculum, and we concluded that
we could introduce endothermic v. exothermic v. activation energy based on energy transfers and overall net energy transfer during reactions. Chemical reactions trasnfer energy "internally" within the system, but can ultimately translate to a transfer of energy into/out of the system through heating. We agreed to describe endothermic reactions as<i> products require <u>more</u> energy than reactants to maintain their particle arrangement </i>and exothermic reactions as <i>products require <u>less</u> energy than reactants to maintain their particle arrangement.</i> This allows students to fit the terminology into their model of energy transfer.<br />
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With this approach, it is important to focus on keeping separate the internal energy transfer between energy "accounts," how the system is defined, and how energy can be transferred into or out of the system from/to the surroundings. Depending on your course curriculum, we found this to be an appropriate place to introduce spontaneity in reactions and discuss when energy transfer occurs. During spontaneous processes, the energy transfer with the surroundings occurs after the reaction; however, during non-spontaneous processes, the energy transfer with the surroundings occurs before the reaction in order to make it happen. Including activation energy can be done here, but it should be incorporated in a manner consistent with the LOL diagrams model of energy transfer; otherwise, it can be held off until a study of reaction kinetics. <br />
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The modeling approach to representing energy transfer is inspired by the work of Gregg Swackhamer, but is presented in an insightful manner by Larry Dukerich, here in this approach to representing energy transfer with chemical reactions:<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/gabud/keeping-track-of-energy-in-chemical-reactions" title="Keeping Track of Energy in Chemical Reactions"></a></b></div>
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</b></b></div>Gary G. Abud, Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10082000053180484544noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-39165959146597302082012-07-24T18:10:00.001-04:002012-07-24T18:10:18.254-04:00#ModChem Day 11<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Modeler's Log, Day 11--<br />
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It was unusual how we had a sneak peek at today's workshop day, because we actually had to prepare for today's session a couple of days ahead of time. Due to the constraints of time in our workshop format, we had a multi-day lab that needed to be done for us so that we had the products at the start of unit 7. Since we meet for 8-hour sessions each day, it wasn't possible for us to do the lab all on one day, though we sometimes progress through more than one unit in a single workshop day. At any rate, day 11 has moved our particle model back in the direction of energy considerations, but not without a <i>twist</i>--<br />
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The day started off with a discussion of Gregg Swackhamer's <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/aad3fq4mhiqaq9r/CognitiveResources-Energy.pdf" target="_blank">Cognitive Resources for Understanding Energy.</a> It is very challenging to put a summary of what he has to say about energy into words; however, the main points that we discussed dealt with:<br />
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<li>The <i>need</i> to have a better way to represent energy in teaching science</li>
<li>There are not multiple "forms" of energy, there is only <i>energy</i></li>
<li>Traditional approaches to teaching the energy concept result in circular reasoning or misconceptions of energy </li>
<li>Energy is not a substance, but it is substance like, and can be treated as being stored or transferred</li>
<li>The language used to talk about energy must not oversimplify nor mislead; it must be clear</li>
<li>Energy should be represented in multiple ways, not merely quantitatively through equations </li>
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Throughout the 40-page article, Swackhamer details many aspects of energy in various contexts and how to think about energy for understanding. Ultimately, we were all able to identify with the need to better teach energy concepts to students so that they have a conceptual model to apply in a variety of energy contexts. <br />
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Our paradigm lab in this unit is the Iron Nail in a solution of copper (ii) chloride. <i>I wonder what will happen when this dark grey nail is submerged in this blue solution for a while???</i><br />
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We started by massing out the copper and iron before combining everything with water into a beaker. Then we combined everything in the beaker and made some observations. The beaker was left alone for a while and then the next day we removed the nail. Over time, the color of the solution and contents of the beaker changed. Once we removed the nails, we isolated all the "orange solid" that was in the beaker and had gathered on the nail. We washed this solid with water and acid, and then we put it on a hot plate to dry for a while. After all was said and done, we massed the nails again and the orange solid that had formed. The comparison was <i>very</i> interesting!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRTtU7j8i6RFSV6pBtsbQ48wFUs3-timXSU7W9CzTGdYS2b3ZbpxNiD7kaKZ2J17HYHXyzDgkUerAlEo_KICUJrG-imf5RuurssVE5CCcuNDWspoBZuR2F-AAMUlTaLScaUTgEcPHo0ZEQ/s1600/Photo+Jul+20,+8+14+30+AM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRTtU7j8i6RFSV6pBtsbQ48wFUs3-timXSU7W9CzTGdYS2b3ZbpxNiD7kaKZ2J17HYHXyzDgkUerAlEo_KICUJrG-imf5RuurssVE5CCcuNDWspoBZuR2F-AAMUlTaLScaUTgEcPHo0ZEQ/s200/Photo+Jul+20,+8+14+30+AM.jpg" width="150" /></a>Upon speculation of what the orange solid could be, we reasoned that it was most likely solid copper metal. This led us to infer that copper and iron had <i>switched places</i> in the beaker, thus producing new substances that weren't there before. Specifically, based on our previously devised model of charged particles and ions, we decided that copper ions had become atoms on the surface of the nail where iron atoms had become ions and went into solution. After we whiteboarded our particle diagrams of this change, we concluded that the switching of places and changing of substances in the beaker amounted to what we wanted to call a "reaction," which is a term not previously used in our sequence. We defined a reaction as: <b>a rearrangement of particles to form different substances</b>.</div>
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We used our symbolic representations of elements and knowledge of how to write chemical formulas to represent what took place in the beaker. There we had it, a chemical equation for a reaction! One issue existed though, we weren't able to decide whether the iron in solution was in +2 or +3 ionic form, so we weren't sure how to balance the equation or predict the products. So, like good modeling students, we wrote out both possibilities on whiteboards and compared to our empirical data. The data showed that the ratio of iron to copper particles in the reaction was 1:1, and thus we were able to conclude the reaction that happened in the beaker:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpvqNL0tIjye066BdIGbRXfKEsg-soomri34Xdikp-QIiu9tyiO5PIoCtTeeNp8esPZJNpWHCxasMTxNe7eZosxmLXi7Djaqoh1JPQjxOxjONtHSgX_Nk7EXpnyFg6Rok7oQiccct6xvvU/s1600/Iron+Nail+Reaction.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="20" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpvqNL0tIjye066BdIGbRXfKEsg-soomri34Xdikp-QIiu9tyiO5PIoCtTeeNp8esPZJNpWHCxasMTxNe7eZosxmLXi7Djaqoh1JPQjxOxjONtHSgX_Nk7EXpnyFg6Rok7oQiccct6xvvU/s200/Iron+Nail+Reaction.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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The debriefing that led us to this reaction, the way to represent it with an equation, and a definition for chemical reaction took a fair amount of time, especially because we had a lengthy debate about the way to represent the ions in solution using our particle diagrams. Eventually, we arrived at consensus about what took place and how to represent it. Then, our day finished up with crafting whiteboards where we deployed our model of chemical reaction to represent the substances involved in a variety of reactions using particle diagrams. This would set us up for our next participant-led questioning session that will take place on <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/modchem-day-12.html" target="_blank">day 12</a>.</div>
</div>Gary G. Abud, Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10082000053180484544noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-20169814390840931992012-07-23T23:16:00.002-04:002012-07-23T23:48:59.185-04:00#ModChem Day 9: Part 2 - Development of Subatomic Particles<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Modeler's Log, Day 9--<br />
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After we finished with our thought-provoking whiteboarding session and article discussion, which you can read about in detail <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/modchem-day-9-part-1-whiteboarding-and.html" target="_blank">here</a>, we continued through the historical development of the atomic model to the existence of a subatomic particle that has negative charge. This was accomplished using explorations into the work of Faraday, Crooks and Thomson.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6vUMMSWt3HFPtFTE4auudlQgQYDZ2XrkhfP-XvedosbC3I3PxF_es3ZCiSLJ1IMXy_Ai6sMJUDYoPEZXYYHr21G10Ib4TzrjK76rNrvCzM-vWU0CyxQYzYu6nz_AcYyq06biFtbu-vNrU/s640/blogger-image-1375070501.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6vUMMSWt3HFPtFTE4auudlQgQYDZ2XrkhfP-XvedosbC3I3PxF_es3ZCiSLJ1IMXy_Ai6sMJUDYoPEZXYYHr21G10Ib4TzrjK76rNrvCzM-vWU0CyxQYzYu6nz_AcYyq06biFtbu-vNrU/s320/blogger-image-1375070501.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>We conducted (heheh..."conducted") the <b>sticky tape lab</b> where we tested the attraction and repulsion of Scotch tape strips to different materials, which led us to arrive at a need for particles smaller than an atom; moreover, the conclusion that a negatively charged particle (later called an electron) must exist inside of the atom! The "<a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CGQQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fteacher2.smithtown.k12.ny.us%2Frodichok%2FLabs%2FSticky%2520Tape%2520Lab.pdf&ei=rL4IUN_8FYnw0gHXzbHXAw&usg=AFQjCNG3Cg0-dHqRVCsVPKEjMb9z4cIMSA&sig2=5Y973o0DsPT6-LnCFYckBg" target="_blank">Sticky Tape Lab</a>" (which can be found in its full modeling entirety on the <a href="http://www.modelingteachers.org/" target="_blank">AMTA website</a>) is a rework of a classic physics electrostatics lab. This lab provided students an opportunity to test the behavior of strips of tape, which had been ripped apart from each other, when in brought in proximity to aluminum, paper, glass, and other ripped apart strips of tape.<br />
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We generated three possible expected outcomes during the design and setup of the lab, including that materials would attract, repel, or do nothing. After testing all the materials against each other, we constructed a matrix that displayed the results:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Ft-KYxs4r4Ose0Sk98qCYc3KYXhO-J3X1xtNKoxPcZ8tQH9ADcFPMeUCzNS675eoEA4JxSkwOPmaL-5gEA8h4iSlzn0cgSIzq-7lfz-uIHwb1D16cIWujRdQSoNTInq0HHFGaTdqB4nl/s1600/Photo+Jul+19,+11+11+26+AM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Ft-KYxs4r4Ose0Sk98qCYc3KYXhO-J3X1xtNKoxPcZ8tQH9ADcFPMeUCzNS675eoEA4JxSkwOPmaL-5gEA8h4iSlzn0cgSIzq-7lfz-uIHwb1D16cIWujRdQSoNTInq0HHFGaTdqB4nl/s320/Photo+Jul+19,+11+11+26+AM.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Based on our results, we determined the charge of each piece of the tape and thus the charge on the other materials as well. Following a very informative video about cathode rays and the experiments surrounding them, the model development to arrive at the existence of charged subatomic particles was complex but happened--this will take carefully crafted planning to do with students, but was really impressive because of how it followed a similar development of the charge model in physics.<br />
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Our model developed to accommodate the transfer and flow of charged particles, as well as help us to characterize our newly "discovered" charged particle. We were able to represent charged particles inside of the atom in a primitive way along with introduce a new property: conductivity! As it turns out, the model we arrived at was that of J.J. Thomson's "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plum_pudding_model" target="_blank">plum pudding</a>," but it explained all that we had seen quite well. In context with what we have been doing all year, it makes sense to arrive at this model of the atom at this time; however, there was copious discontent with even exploring this model much more than out of honorable mention considering what we currently know about atomic theory.<br />
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It's important to note here that the atomic models developed throughout history are NOT merely artifacts but rather evidence-based and well-reasoned attempts to explain the science behind matter and its interactions. All too often, the "history of the atom" chapter is glossed over in chemistry classes by students, because it has the word "history" in it, and by teachers who rush through it to get to the "true (current) stuff" about the atom. I have to admit that I used to be one of those teachers; however, I was never given a full understanding of the development of the atomic model and now I have a MUCH greater appreciation for it and see how important it is in understanding chemistry. Though it may seem unnatural to follow chemistry through a chronological progression of atomic model development, we cannot reduce the model development to mere prestidigitation and page turning in a textbook. This methodology doesn't just honor the "history of the atom," it simulates the models of the atom historically and in context with the associated chemistry that was known at all the points along the way. Resist the urge at this point in the curriculum to jump to a "full-blown" model of the atom that uses all the common jargon, even if it is true that students "already know" that atoms have these subatomic particles. Stick with plum pudding and let the rest come in time.<br />
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As a final aside, I always wondered who ever liked <a href="http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Superb-English-Plum-Pudding-20010" target="_blank">plum pudding</a> anyway, I never remember Bill Cosby advertising it! Then again, I shouldn't knock it before I try it. Perhaps we'll just have to make some plum pudding this year in chemistry and taste it for ourselves! That'd be memorable, right?!<br />
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</div>Gary G. Abud, Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10082000053180484544noreply@blogger.com99tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-29507761526912277792012-07-23T22:42:00.001-04:002012-07-23T23:47:55.766-04:00#ModChem Day 9: Part 1 - Whiteboarding and Discourse<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Modeler's Log, Day 9--<br />
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We got right to work today finishing our first participant-led questioning session with whiteboard presentations of review problems in unit 5. Everyone was given as much time as they needed to work on questioning with their "students," but it did go more quickly by the end than it started. Embedding plausible student mistakes can be difficult for teachers to really simulate students' incorrect lines of thinking; and, as a result of our natural tendency to forget what it was like to not have a solid understanding of the content, this challenge extends into trying to understand, diagnose, and remediate students' misunderstandings. At the end, we all debriefed the whiteboarding session and our questioning attempts--we determined that we all need more practice. A hard lesson learned was the difference between closed and open questions in this session; that is, questions that will only elicit one response (e.g., yes/no) rather than questions that can have a variety of responses communicated in a variety of ways.<br />
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Immediately following the whiteboarding session, we discussed <a href="http://www.nwosu.edu/whiteboardreferences" target="_blank">two articles</a> on whiteboarding as a learning process and Socratic dialogue in teaching. The article review coupled with our own experience as "students" in the workshop led us to many great points and even more great questions. Whiteboarding truly is an essential component of modeling instruction, and it is a learning process.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://pzweb.harvard.edu/vt/VisibleThinking_Images/homepage_images/homedesign1a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="65" src="http://pzweb.harvard.edu/vt/VisibleThinking_Images/homepage_images/homedesign1a.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>It is not just an activity or another way to go over homework; rather, it is a way to <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2011/07/making-thinking-visible-using.html" target="_blank">make thinking visible</a>, help students become more metacognitive and to reflect more on their own understanding. Of course, you don't have to use modeling instruction to do whiteboarding, but you do have to use whiteboarding if you do modeling instruction...regardless, you can employ strategies that make thinking visible, such as those given by <a href="http://pzweb.harvard.edu/vt/VisibleThinking_html_files/VisibleThinking1.html" target="_blank">Harvard's program</a> on the strategy. <br />
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This discussion included ways to hold students accountable for their work; e.g., students who construct the whiteboard cannot present, or everyone must speak during the presentation. This helps to get everyone an equal chance to be involved in the process, rather than leaving up to be dominated by certain individuals who may be more "in the know" than others. A great idea that came up was to empower students to ask the teacher-style questions of each other, and not just during whiteboard presentations but in all aspects of the class. Having them emulate the teacher questioning will prevent them from being mere "tellers" when helping others or working with each other. Also, we know that to fully understand something would entail that one comprehends the connections between aspects of a concept and has an ability to navigate through multiple representations of the concept or anticipate pathways that can lead to understanding of the concept. After all, if someone can teach someone else something, without merely "explaining" it to (telling) them, then mustn't they have a strong understanding in the first place?<br />
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Finally, with regard to the topic of whiteboarding and Socratic discourse, we talked about having Norms for whiteboards, both in their creation and in the presentation of them during class discussions:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>One person talking at a time; not everyone talking over each other</li><li>Nobody likes a know-it-all; telling isn't teaching--ask questions instead of just telling someone</li><li>Talk loudly enough to be heard by everyone else</li><li>Talk to the entire group, not just the teacher </li><li>Everyone claps after each board, and it's a golf clap (via #TeamPhysics)</li><li>Write legibly, with a darker color, and large enough to see across the room</li></ul>Asking good questions is different than telling in an interrogative way. Don't just end your questions with "...right?" or "...yes?" because it encourages an affirmative answer so that the student appears 'in agreement' with the teacher, since the teacher is viewed as the expert...right?<br />
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Whiteboarding sessions should be used as an opportunity for students to learn from mistakes and not merely just arrive at an answer. All too often, it is just about the <i>right answer</i> in school, and when students come to expect that, they can lose sight on the learning process and the underlying comprehension that underpins the <i>right answer</i>. This can be significantly helped if the teacher resists the urge to correct mistakes that students make on their whiteboards before presenting them when they are constructing their board; instead, let the mistake get presented and then fix it as a class through discourse. Never let a mistake proceed uncorrected <i>during</i> a whiteboarding session. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHx1uJsyHm0YmIZGM3i6BMVK6wcmhQNlZIZrBCNpWJbhqmkpxJI33LvmzIVPY64ukanVcqUxJKTe7LxlwZ-wqZi_afh24BvgMsPINdFTqID0HnXeylxjfzjGs5mpbaNC7lsp01_Ki8Aru7/s1600/Photo+Jul+18,+2+29+25+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHx1uJsyHm0YmIZGM3i6BMVK6wcmhQNlZIZrBCNpWJbhqmkpxJI33LvmzIVPY64ukanVcqUxJKTe7LxlwZ-wqZi_afh24BvgMsPINdFTqID0HnXeylxjfzjGs5mpbaNC7lsp01_Ki8Aru7/s320/Photo+Jul+18,+2+29+25+PM.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Coupled in with our discussion of whiteboarding and Socratic discourse, stemmed from our practice at questioning students during our simulated whiteboarding session, was a discussion of the student errors we saw in the session. Issues with dimensional analysis, especially multiple steps, and misuse of the relationships between quantities, were our main areas of focus. We agreed that, because students sometimes just focus on just matching units up in an algorithmic fashion under the factor-label method, stoichiometry becomes a separated based on mathematical ability and cognitive development to formal operational thinking. Students seem to have a struggle with stoichiometry and dimensional anlysis or are quite facile with it. The challenge, however, lies in the approach to teaching these topics. If dimensional analysis is reduced to a factor-label chart with the answer as the main focus, then students will lose sight of the physical relationships between quantities and not necessarily know what it is that their answer means, let alone how they arrived at it.<br />
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Using single step proportions (or even the cross-multiply setup that students learn in math) can allow students to keep the physical context at the focus of their problem-solving and attend to the physical relationships between quantities to help them <i>reason</i> their way or <i>think</i> their way to a solution rather than perform a mere algorithm. This can be accomplished using "for every" speak, which is a linguistic representation of the physical relationships between the quantities. Using "for every" statements in your teaching of dimensional analysis or stoichiometry is discussed in more detail <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2011/08/for-every-speak-cognitive-approach-to.html" target="_blank">here</a> from a presentation given at <a href="http://www.wmich.edu/chemed/" target="_blank">ChemEd 2011</a>. This is not to say that the factor-label method cannot ever be used, rather it is expedient and a helpful way to solve the problems, but it is not intuitive nor a form of reasoning; it is an algorithm that can be applied without an understanding of what it means. Since we want students to be critical thinkers and to be able to reason their way through a problem solution, starting out with an algorithm (shortcut) will mean nothing without a full development of the concept behind it. The "for every" statements can eventually lead students to arrive at the factor-label algorithm on their own, or at least to apprehend it more easily when it is taught.<br />
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Ultimately, we want our students to be empowered and to feel success with their chemistry, but this cannot be accomplished if we teach only in a way that makes sense to someone who has a higher-level understanding of chemistry to begin with; keep in mind that many of our students are still concrete thinkers and will not develop further just by being <i>forced</i> to think in a formal operational way; instead, we need to scaffold them with intuitive approaches that will transfer to reliable problem-solving strategies later. This is done with the way we teach, how we make thinking visible, and how we engage students with us and each other in Socratic discourse of a nature that is critical to the content we are trying to teach & learn.<br />
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</div>Gary G. Abud, Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10082000053180484544noreply@blogger.com50tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-28390580279488325032012-07-22T22:15:00.002-04:002012-07-23T23:47:39.624-04:00#ModChem Day 8<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Modeler's Log, Day 8--<br />
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One of the hallmarks of reform in science education deals with finding pedagogical approaches that can correct misconceptions in students' understanding of scientific ideas. Much of the work in the modeling instruction program attempts to confront students' naive views of the physical world and motivate them to adopt a correct conceptual framework for scientific ideas. Today's article discussion centered around an extensive inquiry by Vanessa Barker into <a href="http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:7XLNNGUv2IIJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=0,33&as_vis=1" target="_blank">students' misconceptions of chemical concepts</a>. Barker's manuscript reviews the literature on misconceptions in chemistry as well as generates ideas from student interviews. Her concluding reflections on best practice with regard to correcting and avoiding misconceptions in chemistry education indicate several areas where instruction should focus conceptual understanding. <br />
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In reviewing and discussing Barker's work, we noted several areas where we felt Barker's work was most compelling, including:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;"></ul><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Stoichiometry</b></li><li><b>Energy and Entropy</b></li><li><b>Phase Changes</b></li><li><b>Chemical Bonding</b></li></ol><ul style="text-align: left;"></ul>According to Barker, teaching using multiple modes of thinking about chemical ideas, including symbolic, diagrammatic, and quantitative representations, can lead to a more solid understanding. For example, when performing stoichiometric calculations, it could be helpful for students to draw particle diagrams that represent the balanced equation before attempting to solve quantitative calculations. This can help them to keep their problem-solving attached to what is physically happening in the reaction and understand better what is taking place. With regard to concepts that could otherwise be quite nebulous to introductory students, such as energy and entropy, having a visual representation can help students bridge the gap between concrete and abstract thinking. All in all, everyone agreed that despite their best traditional approaches to instructional delivery in these areas, a fair number of students still came away from lessons with misunderstandings. This helped all of us to agree that a different approach is necessary--that's why we're taking this course in modeling instruction, right!?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiywu9Kl_OsrBy6YcHzlJGO3GygkX0uVgBrHjnp01Eg_Vv_rGKOkML7w1nF9VvLcmXo1CDSLwr2jYww1TF6KhJ6G_8KcxpfWaXiFMR5XF_5kqvQ8vG6K5RNDz5TDTuHvR8RXs9UB-ck3dBl/s1600/Photo+Jul+18,+11+47+52+AM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiywu9Kl_OsrBy6YcHzlJGO3GygkX0uVgBrHjnp01Eg_Vv_rGKOkML7w1nF9VvLcmXo1CDSLwr2jYww1TF6KhJ6G_8KcxpfWaXiFMR5XF_5kqvQ8vG6K5RNDz5TDTuHvR8RXs9UB-ck3dBl/s320/Photo+Jul+18,+11+47+52+AM.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>After our poignant discussion of misconceptions in stoichiometry, it was on to developing a concept of the mole based on experimental evidence and following the same discovery sequence that historically took place in chemistry. We learned to "count by massing" with an activity that applied Avogadro's hypothesis to prescription bottles full of different types of hardware. In doing so, we developed a mass to quantity relationship and learned that it was different for different substances. We were also able to find mass ratios, and relative masses, for the hardware. We then moved on to apply this new found understanding to conduct an empirical formula lab with zinc chloride. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitLJuiLxSpYRU61I68Nu2QxCHjrjbJMa83cfqbJOKHChqOK4ouHCefnVu4A9WcoIcvQOiX7neNL66v935Ct1Lpg9gqnhjU4XCfyxc18JcKNh3UW1JqGCIYl5ixVZTeTrn9hwH-uOdkJdHi/s1600/Relative+Mass+of+Oxygen.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitLJuiLxSpYRU61I68Nu2QxCHjrjbJMa83cfqbJOKHChqOK4ouHCefnVu4A9WcoIcvQOiX7neNL66v935Ct1Lpg9gqnhjU4XCfyxc18JcKNh3UW1JqGCIYl5ixVZTeTrn9hwH-uOdkJdHi/s320/Relative+Mass+of+Oxygen.png" width="320" /></a></div>These endeavors led us later to abstract the relative mass of individual particles and eventually the relative masses of the elements. It was actually really fascinating to see that relative atomic mass could be arrived at empirically like this. A standard element is used as the comparison and all the other elements' masses are determined relative to the standard--this made the atomic masses of the elements far more meaningful from both a student perspective and personally from a teacher point of view as well. I actually cannot recall ever making the connection of atomic masses to relative atomic masses with my chemistry students in the past, but that is an important point that they need to understand, because had any other standard been used, the atomic masses of the elements would be different, though their relative masses would stay proportional to one another. This screenshot is from a periodic table <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/emd-pte/id377393859?mt=8" target="_blank">iPad app by EMD Chemicals</a>, called EMD PTE (free,) which displays the elements' relative atomic masses. This app is simple and has a nice interface, but most coincidentally, I appreciate much more now that it displays the <i>relative</i> atomic mass and not simply "atomic mass."<br />
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<i>*There are other free periodic table iPad apps, which are also very good, including one by <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nova-elements/id512772649?mt=8" target="_blank">NOVA</a>.</i><br />
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The empirical formula lab is often done in chemistry classes of various levels as a verification lab (a lab done simply to verify a conclusion that has already been communicated to students) as opposed to an <a href="http://faculty.coloradomtn.edu/jeschofnig/inquiry.htm" target="_blank">inquiry-based lab</a> (one where the students empirically arrive at the conclusion that would otherwise be directly communicated.) However, in this sequence, the mass and particle ratios, including relative atomic mass, and empirical formula determination are all done before teaching nomenclature and complete formula writing. Typically, nomenclature and formula writing are usually taught using a model of bonding that is based on electric charge; historically however, derivation of empirical formulas was possible before a solid understanding of charge and bonding based on charges was part of the communal knowledge. The modeling sequence gives students a more concrete foundation for the physical ratios of particles in compounds and in the fully uncovered formula writing that will follow later in the curriculum. <br />
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The rest of the day focused on stoichiometric "conversions" between mass, moles, and number of particles. This was an area that the article, which we earlier discussed, had noted is part of a stoichiometric pitfall of understanding for students. I put <i>conversions</i> in quotations here, because the ones we do in stoichiometry are not really true conversions, because they "convert" between units of <i>different</i> quantities and not units of the <i>same</i> quantity, e.g., converting from feet to meters is a length-length conversion since they are both units of length, but converting from meters to pounds (length-weight) would not be a true conversion since they measure different quantities.<br />
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We considered different approaches to working out these "conversions," but most teachers fell back on the factor-label method. As a group, we were tasked with embedding student mistakes into our whiteboards of the stoichiometry problems, and then to practice teacher questioning with each other when we led the whiteboard session; however, it was a struggle for us to generate naive mistakes in our problem-solving and truly think like students.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqYBrGZD5Vu8UVngb-nlOdWsjx4Gcy5PULcQmYHzUuBdu8n64awLFAeFsjES7j3areCXsLRuhAV_uW82iT5tWquzP7tZmLOE-3cneSRaFYe31S_lBktruesirRPi2_8mIeCOU0H3WTVqgr/s1600/Photo+Jul+18,+2+29+47+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqYBrGZD5Vu8UVngb-nlOdWsjx4Gcy5PULcQmYHzUuBdu8n64awLFAeFsjES7j3areCXsLRuhAV_uW82iT5tWquzP7tZmLOE-3cneSRaFYe31S_lBktruesirRPi2_8mIeCOU0H3WTVqgr/s320/Photo+Jul+18,+2+29+47+PM.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>As chemistry teachers, we have had lots of practice with calculations and become very facile with them. Most of us can think problems through using a factor-label approach, but that is because we are at formal operations stage of thinking and development, cognitively speaking. Our "strug-fest" with generating student errors was a consequence of being unable to really empathize with a student who could not understand the factor-label algorithm. Some of us, literally, could not fathom how a person wouldn't understand what is often called, "dimensional analysis." We come to fall victim to our own retrograde amnesia, where we cannot remember what it was like to <i>not</i> understand how to do dimensional analysis using factor-label method. Factor-label <i>seems</i> easy enough, but often doesn't require any true understanding of what the situation entails if you can match up the labels with the factors properly to solve for the desired unit.<br />
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This led to a concluding debate about how to do stoichiometric problems and issues surrounding them for students:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i>Are they mere conversions that can be done using a simple proportion? </i></li><li><i>Are there inherent considerations with the factor-label method that raise issues for some students? </i></li><li><i>Is it oversimplifying to reduce these conversions to cross-multiplying with proportions? </i></li><li><i>Is it possible to do multi-step problems in several individual steps, or do they have to be done in one combined step? </i></li></ul>These are all very valid questions about how to teach these conversions, and they will later be applicable questions when we get to stoichiometry that relates to determining product mass, for example, based on given initial conditions, or the like of which students often flounder or flourish. <br />
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Could we somehow make the process of stoichiometry more concrete for students at first, then allowing those who can "do the math" more easily take off on their own factor-label adventure? I propose that "for every" statements are a concrete solution to making stoichiometry more accessible to students, because it makes the proportional reasoning more intuitive and keeps them ground in the physical situation. Then, every aspect is done as multiple individual steps, but can be transitioned into combined one-step solutions that encompass factor-label algorithms once they understand what it is that they are actually doing. After all, aren't we in this to <i>help</i> students <u>to succeed</u> and not just <i>allow</i> the ones, who would otherwise do so anyway, <u>to proceed</u>?<br />
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Here, I describe a more cognitive approach to stoichiometry "conversions," which can be a lead-up to using factor-label method and can benefit all students, especially those who have difficulty with proportional reasoning, it deals with <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2011/08/for-every-speak-cognitive-approach-to.html" target="_blank">using "for every" statements to work with stoichiometry. </a><br />
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</div>Gary G. Abud, Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10082000053180484544noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-57381269225905174502012-07-21T11:26:00.000-04:002012-07-23T23:49:15.858-04:00#ModChem Day 10<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Modeler's Log, Day 10--<br />
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After two weeks of the modeling chemistry workshop, we finally arrived at a point today where the periodic table was introduced. Based on our sequence and model development, this point in unit 6 is the first time where classifying substances based on their properties and arranging them has full relevance to uncover a need for the periodic table. <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/modchem-day-9.html" target="_blank">Yesterday</a>, we introduced the property of conductivity of elements, but today we did the same with compounds and solutions. We found out that ionic compounds need to be dissolved in solution before they will conduct charge. This can be accomplished in the lab (kind of like <a href="http://kaffee.50webs.com/Science/labs/Chem/Lab-Conductivity.html" target="_blank">this one</a>) with solutions (salt, sugar, water, Gatorade, etc.) and probes or virtually using a <a href="http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/sugar-and-salt-solutions" target="_blank">PhET simulation</a>. We compared the properties of atomic, molecular, and ionic solids in terms of the structural unit of each and connectedness between discrete units. This can be done using x-ray crystallography structural visualization software (freeware) called <a href="http://www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk/products/mercury/" target="_blank">Mercury</a>. The software allows you to look at a 3D model for the structure of different solids. As a class, or in groups, the students can complete the structure classification activity. Based on our observations and classifications of each, a formal definition for atom, molecule, and formula unit were developed. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZf8EUxkzeqnIE1LwzEtYaPbdAs2Mc-6nuPGultpW9WlYOHiLOs4KOz1xOA3Tqofr21yeLUhkYYYQ_QN_qyrzi0D7wckjkeOgA9TKVgtvx7qQD4J72ZktswQOGcqb56gxGV0eAVaQg02TZ/s1600/Periodic+Table+Basic.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZf8EUxkzeqnIE1LwzEtYaPbdAs2Mc-6nuPGultpW9WlYOHiLOs4KOz1xOA3Tqofr21yeLUhkYYYQ_QN_qyrzi0D7wckjkeOgA9TKVgtvx7qQD4J72ZktswQOGcqb56gxGV0eAVaQg02TZ/s320/Periodic+Table+Basic.png" width="320" /></a></div>This led to a <i>need</i> for a way to communicate the properties of a compound and distinguish it through <i>nomenclature</i> from other compound types with different properties. Thus, naming and formula writing were introduced, along with chemical symbols, dealing with molecular compounds and ionic compounds, including polyatomic ions in some of the compounds as well. In contrast to what most of the teachers in the workshop described, this is much later in a typical curriculum year that these topics are introduced. Many traditional sequences start the year off with symbolism and nomenclature, not to mention the periodic table. <br />
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However, introducing the periodic table at this point in the model development allowed us to develop a model for ionic bonding that was not based on the good old <i>drop and swap</i> method algorithm. In the case of uncovering a model for ionic compounds, we relied on our knowledge of empirical formulas and definite proportions to determine the charges on various ions and piece together a way of understanding how they went together with other ions. It was very tempting to go into detail about electrons in the different ions or to elaborate on the bonding mechanisms, but that is not for this unit--that all comes later. For this unit, students merely arrive at a basic model for ionic bonding and covalent bonding; they keep to examples that fit the model at this point and later on will encounter instances where the model may need to be revised, e.g., transition elements in compounds or how polyatomic ions are formed.<br />
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Interestingly enough, there is not a delineated approach to teaching nomenclature in the modeling methodology, because nomenclature literally follows mere conventional rules. We discussed some different ways to make the teaching of nomenclature more accessible to students, including 'chunking' the different types of compounds that can be named, or choosing the order in which you teach molecular vs. ionic compound nomenclature to best fit your students. In the end, it turned out that this was one of the only things that is left up to the teacher's discretion for how they teach it in the modeling curriculum. The connection to the chemistry modeling curriculum is that the students will have arrived at <i>a need for</i> chemical nomenclature to readily communicate the type of compound and its properties before you teach nomenclature; this makes it at least more contextual than a mere set of rules of the chemical language. We know as teachers using the modeling instruction methodology that even the most seemingly direct instruction can be improved by making it into a discussion with whiteboarding and interaction, not mere lecture. So, regardless of how you choose to teach nomenclature, make your slant on it fit with your modeling instruction pedagogy as best as possible.<br />
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Our discussion wrapped up with brainstorming some ideas for teaching nomenclature in a non-direct instructional way, including <a href="http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/pkal/mnscu/activities/38478.html" target="_blank">POGIL activities</a> and <a href="http://www.chemistryinquiry.com/index.htm" target="_blank">ChemQuests</a> to give students a chance to think about the rules of nomenclature in a more critical way, discuss them with classmates, and then whiteboard to compare naming conventions. <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="421" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/2514513?rel=0" style="border-width: 1px 1px 0; border: 1px solid #CCC; margin-bottom: 5px;" width="512"></iframe> <br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 5px;"><b> <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/gabud/ionic-naming" target="_blank" title="Ionic Naming"></a></b> </div><br />
Then, we tried our hand at some formula writing, nomenclature, and particle diagrams for some ionic compounds, but we will not whiteboard and present these until next time. You can check out how the whiteboards looked in this session in the next entry--<a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/modchem-day-11.html" target="_blank">Day 11 recap</a>. Also on Day 11<a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/modchem-day-11.html" target="_blank"></a>, we will be discussing <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:2JKf7zoXFU0J:modeling.asu.edu/modeling/CognitiveResources-Energy.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiyD0-8gzaSqk7168MeWXCV472WC9XLme0nusOy9qmRh_lo5dXUbgmPAwmJMGx9r9B4WTDzfxBQLU3hAh7Rhb1O76jyQXh3lkbFX1aEw_QF_Husr5My4sB2u0jkdbO9SyR8H7p3&sig=AHIEtbRNCM_ps3wXIKSpygwprLO66YI4pQ" target="_blank">Gregg Swackhamer's Cognitive Resources for Teaching Energy.</a> This is a must read for any science teacher who has to teach the energy concept or work with any kind of quantitative topics relating to energy.<br />
</div>Gary G. Abud, Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10082000053180484544noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-45329576000974636002012-07-19T18:11:00.003-04:002012-07-23T23:47:20.413-04:00#ModChem Day 7<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Modeler's Log, Day 7--<br />
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The main focus of today was quantifying energy transfer while keeping a strong connection between macroscopic observations of an associated change. In the modeling chemistry curriculum framework, the quantitative treatment of energy is an outstanding pedagogical approach that helps students critically think their way through specific heat and phase change situations instead of having them rely on mere equations and algorithms. Though equations can be used here as part of the problem-solving strategy, they need not be; instead, physical relationships between the quantities of mass, temperature change, specific heat, heat of vaporization/fusion, and energy are the focus and these are grounded in a graphical representation of energy storage and transfer.<br />
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This approach is a further development of the qualitative treatment of energy that we introduced on <a href="http://abudscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/modchem-day-6.html" target="_blank">day 6</a>, inspired by <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CFAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmodeling.asu.edu%2Fmodeling%2FCognitiveResources-Energy.pdf&ei=6XwIUI_lL-Ls0gHP-6zUAw&usg=AFQjCNHWG6P0mNfXUTQzEtKqWjzb9-AWyA&sig2=iYcKAZNINF-7MlJYFrluMw" target="_blank">cognitive resources for teaching the energy concept</a>. The energy bar charts, a.k.a. LOL diagrams, have been helpful for thinking about the energy transfers in systems, but today we related those transfers to several factors and attained a mathematical model for energy transfer during a temperature change, a melting/freezing phase change, and an evaporating/condensing phase change. The models we used included specific heat and heat of vaporization & heat of fusion. Many of the participants noted that they "would not cover thermochemistry topics like this until well into the second semester," but expressed appreciation for being able to fit it in sequence with the development of our chemistry model so early in the curriculum year. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc_v5wiSowrFPhmZ8Ov-kGyxDgKxumUugLbUHik_lr9-rxJpxlKsTxkk6JHWCph3QTWNB7wiPcuTEAeLdjCYCzlLuVj5em-1fzh8y9yzuHXq-kLxzV6bVKzfPhQR0uGll6MrUpViV9F-7J/s640/blogger-image-36333474.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc_v5wiSowrFPhmZ8Ov-kGyxDgKxumUugLbUHik_lr9-rxJpxlKsTxkk6JHWCph3QTWNB7wiPcuTEAeLdjCYCzlLuVj5em-1fzh8y9yzuHXq-kLxzV6bVKzfPhQR0uGll6MrUpViV9F-7J/s200/blogger-image-36333474.jpg" width="150" /></a>We deployed our models on some practice problems and reasoned our way to solutions on whiteboards before presenting to the class. We kept our problem-solving approach in terms of our model and connected what we were doing to what we had seen in lab already. That meant utilizing a heating or cooling curve to represent what was happening in the problem as a basis for our problem-solving. Dealing with thermochemistry problems by connecting heating/cooling curves to energy bar graphs and to the equations, made it much more manageable to think through the problem and minimize errors. Take this example problem where an 140g of water cools from 75 degrees Celsius down to 25 degrees Celsius. We solved this problem by first drawing a cooling curve to represent the situation, determining what type of energy transfer mechanism was at hand (temperature change or phase change) and then applying the correct relationship between the given quantities and the energy using the specific heat of water.<br />
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Other groups worked through problems that involved phase changes and the energy associated with that transfer, while other groups treated problems that had both a temperature change and a phase change. This allowed us to see how the heat of fusion/vaporization and specific heat could be dealt with in a modeling approach. We all agreed by the end that this would minimize the confusion of symbols and equations that some students encounter when trying to determine what to do to solve a complex problem of energy transfer in introductory thermochemistry units.<br />
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We discussed several ideas for lab experiments in which students could determine or work with specific heat for water as well as the heat of fusion. Though we did not complete an experiment of this type in our session, many teachers had one in their arsenal to fall back upon in their classroom. Many are available <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CFAQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fphs.prs.k12.nj.us%2Frcorell%2FHeatofFusionVaporiz.pdf&ei=-IAIUK7QAabp0gGkmvmVBA&usg=AFQjCNEtDhBiaWHGn75CvTq9QEFLV_QJQA&sig2=0o-oc3Kbyo9w9RiHD-HJ7A" target="_blank">online</a>, and some require very low-tech setups. One take home message that came from all our experimentation, practice and discussion was that you can only measure energy <i>transfers</i>, not energy storage, and we should emphasize that with students.<br />
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We started on unit 4, which deals with the physical properties of matter, and we launched into a discussion of such properties in tandem with a short movie on <a href="http://cwx.prenhall.com/petrucci/medialib/media_portfolio/text_images/059_MixesandComp.MOV" target="_blank">sulfur and iron in a mixture vs. a compound</a>. After listing the physical properties that we had as part of our model thus far, e.g., boiling point, melting, point density, heat capacity, and heat of fusion/vaporization, it was on to defining a mixture vs. a substance and then separating a mixture of several substances based on their physical properties. We introduced the new physical property of solubility and differentiated mixtures that were homogeneous from heterogeneous; we examined mixtures that were in both the solid and the liquid state. The exploration into physical properties introduced us to several separation techniques, including gravity filtration, distillation, and chromatography. This start of the fourth unit went on with formally defining and differentiating between a compound and a mixture, and then with constructing particle representations of each.<br />
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Once we had assimilated compounds and mixtures into our model with the proper particle representations of each, it was on to begin quantifying this new component of our model using ratios. For example, in water, we know there are twice as many hydrogen particles compared to oxygen particles. <i>(*Note: at this point the term "atom" has still not be formally added to the lexicon of our model.)</i> We examined empirical evidence for the ratio of hydrogen to oxygen in water, building upon our model as it pertained to gases, with a Hoffman apparatus demonstration of electrolyzing water.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/OTEX38bQ-2w?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br />
Abstracting from this new evidence for ratios and the aspects of our model that pertained to gases and observations from the electrolysis of water, we reasoned our way to <a href="http://library.thinkquest.org/12596/avogadro.html" target="_blank">Avogadro's hypothesis</a>. There were numerous steps in the process of getting students to arrive at this as well as at the conclusion that there must be diatomic elemental gases, but to enumerate them here would not capture the essence of the modeling approach to developing this part of the model. However, by the end of the day, we had arrived at the law of definite proportions, and almost all of Dalton's atomic theory. Following the development through a historical perspective has given me an entirely new outlook on the history of chemistry, which is sometimes glossed over in a fact-based manner, and is influencing how I will teach chemistry in the future.<br />
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For an online interactive way to experience some of what we went through in the workshop today, you can check out <a href="http://web.visionlearning.com/dalton_playhouse/ad_loader.html" target="_blank">Dalton's Playhouse</a>--or, you could always take a modeling chemistry workshop! <br />
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</div>Gary G. Abud, Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10082000053180484544noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7044479264493486068.post-30353507857105005522012-07-17T21:44:00.000-04:002012-07-23T23:46:59.761-04:00#ModChem Day 6<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">Modeler's Log, Day 6--<br />
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The second week started off with just as much energy as the first.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">We started off with a hearty discussion of</span><span style="font-size: small;"> <a href="http://chemeducator.org/bibs/0002002/00020118.htm" target="_blank">Testing for Conceptual Understanding in General Chemistry</a> by Craig W. Bowen and Diane Bunce. This was perhaps our best article-based discussion thus far in the workshop. The article dealt with misconceptions in chemistry that have been elucidated by a number of researchers on the topic as well as assessment strategies to address misconceptions. <br />
We were prompted to decide how we will change our assessments in the future to reflect our knowledge of misconceptions. There was a tremendous exchane in which participants discussed many great ideas, including:</span></div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-size: small;">Assessments for measuring individual progress (summative assessments and formative assessments) vs. measuring whole group progress (Modeling chemistry's Assessment of Basic Chemistry Concepts, ABCC)</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></li><li><span style="font-size: small;">Paired or linked questions (like on the ABCC) or the sets of questions where the second question depends on answer to first</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></li><li><span style="font-size: small;">Open-ended constructed response questions instead of mere multiple choice questions</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></li><li><span style="font-size: small;">Conceptual questions vs. algorithmic questions</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></li><li><span style="font-size: small;">To allow/permit test-corrections or reassessments and the value of learning from mistakes on tests</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></li><li><span style="font-size: small;">Writing "good" or plausible distractors that address different misconceived lines of thinking and rules of assessment question writing</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></li><li><span style="font-size: small;">Test questions often ask for critical thinking from students, but if teachers don't provide opportunities for students to practice critical thinking during class, then the assessment isn't fair</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></li><li><span style="font-size: small;">When we "teach" something in class and then assess something similar, but only to find that the students weren't able to do it, we as educators conclude: "the students weren't able to do..." instead of "what did I the teacher do that led to this?"</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></li><li><span style="font-size: small;">Do conceptual questions or explanatory open-ended and constructed response questions "hurt" students who have language issues?</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></li><li><span style="font-size: small;">In the "real world," people have resources and life-lines, why don't we provide those parameters more in a classroom assessment setting?</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></li><li><span style="font-size: small;">Teaching to a test vs. teaching to standards (when to create/generate your assessment: before teaching or after teaching?)</span></li></ul><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI8tQfN6iF7KimF7qN10oiySY2w2QZ3s1U2nuqeG3GYgIfpPImcX3akvoEQTLRPxSypa1DETwmTxqKO8vm_Hgnt_iaCdCL_6059NNRa6bh0Vvo2G_aFvry6AKa7SY7FVZmCH70Y-Jiz-en/s1600/Photo+Jul+16,+10+20+41+AM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI8tQfN6iF7KimF7qN10oiySY2w2QZ3s1U2nuqeG3GYgIfpPImcX3akvoEQTLRPxSypa1DETwmTxqKO8vm_Hgnt_iaCdCL_6059NNRa6bh0Vvo2G_aFvry6AKa7SY7FVZmCH70Y-Jiz-en/s200/Photo+Jul+16,+10+20+41+AM.jpg" width="150" /></a></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-size: small;">After this rich discussion, we moved on to a lab--the most EXCITING lab of the year--the water heating curve lab.We took some ice in a beaker and heated it through changes of state and temperature changes until it boiled. This lab took quite some time, but since we had so much <i>fun</i> doing it, we forgot about the time. </span></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><br />
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Here is the lab, condensed in to about a minute and a half through stop-motion animation video:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/rH0PaiUBelQ" width="560"></iframe><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirzWFugvflujsh0GMk0fmUU8trnyUytFo9RvuCfCH5qQ6ZOfnmF0-bzzigu-BSIj7ZH9JjpQJ5l4yt2xTRH_lwoa2OgnvHPB2IS8E-T3hTO7yQnej3OT5A4f0EbnkvOno4IyrXRqgo9PdG/s1600/Photo+Jul+16,+1+02+24+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirzWFugvflujsh0GMk0fmUU8trnyUytFo9RvuCfCH5qQ6ZOfnmF0-bzzigu-BSIj7ZH9JjpQJ5l4yt2xTRH_lwoa2OgnvHPB2IS8E-T3hTO7yQnej3OT5A4f0EbnkvOno4IyrXRqgo9PdG/s1600/Photo+Jul+16,+1+02+24+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirzWFugvflujsh0GMk0fmUU8trnyUytFo9RvuCfCH5qQ6ZOfnmF0-bzzigu-BSIj7ZH9JjpQJ5l4yt2xTRH_lwoa2OgnvHPB2IS8E-T3hTO7yQnej3OT5A4f0EbnkvOno4IyrXRqgo9PdG/s1600/Photo+Jul+16,+1+02+24+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirzWFugvflujsh0GMk0fmUU8trnyUytFo9RvuCfCH5qQ6ZOfnmF0-bzzigu-BSIj7ZH9JjpQJ5l4yt2xTRH_lwoa2OgnvHPB2IS8E-T3hTO7yQnej3OT5A4f0EbnkvOno4IyrXRqgo9PdG/s200/Photo+Jul+16,+1+02+24+PM.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">After debriefing the lab on the heating of water through temperature and phase changes, we arrived at a representation for the energy storage and transfer in in the system that represented the changes that were taking place. We were able to infer that though energy was constantly being transferred from the hot plate to the water in the beaker, when the temperature wasn't changing the energy was still being transferred <i>somewhere</i>. The destination of the energy transfer was the distance between the particles (the arrangement of the particles) represented by the Eph, or energy of phase. This was contrasted by the regions of the curve where there was a temperature change, and in that case we recognized that the energy was being transferred to the energy associated with the particles' motion (thermal energy.) </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyfa34PQz0C0QxUif5NnAtNB9IpttNkdD9IPKDuJvinQfGDFv5HBEMNlEvNi44rpDBsJOccQGMhGilMCHs1x6ud0pXJjzzrjdD4-SKkYcFnCGr7y6wpLdt8rfhOMZs919qYJm8uK3rzmeH/s1600/Photo+Jul+16,+2+46+57+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyfa34PQz0C0QxUif5NnAtNB9IpttNkdD9IPKDuJvinQfGDFv5HBEMNlEvNi44rpDBsJOccQGMhGilMCHs1x6ud0pXJjzzrjdD4-SKkYcFnCGr7y6wpLdt8rfhOMZs919qYJm8uK3rzmeH/s200/Photo+Jul+16,+2+46+57+PM.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-size: small;">Our exploration into energy transfers and storage moved from there to constructing a representation of the storage and transfer of energy using bar graphs, fondly referred to as "LOL" diagrams. These diagrams provide students a visual way to describe the energy stored in a system and transferred between a system and its surroundings. This handy and cognitive way of representing energy prevents energy from being vague to students and provides a way for them to think through situations and problems involving energy quantification and transfer.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW4OYUW5IWxrBMaGDvNzmmJz6S66SbwjQ0UR7fnny7OpSLEmisgVIWkqwJ16ezhw36v4de6hc0NLKqs12bnPBZrQzcJKMFE4e3KrTtUZLlLTLZYTsvhW1f1Bz_pJG9CQYhMaGWR-GuAC2o/s1600/Photo+Jul+16,+3+11+06+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW4OYUW5IWxrBMaGDvNzmmJz6S66SbwjQ0UR7fnny7OpSLEmisgVIWkqwJ16ezhw36v4de6hc0NLKqs12bnPBZrQzcJKMFE4e3KrTtUZLlLTLZYTsvhW1f1Bz_pJG9CQYhMaGWR-GuAC2o/s200/Photo+Jul+16,+3+11+06+PM.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-size: small;">Once we had a way to represent energy, it was on to represent the energy storage and transfer in the heating of water experiment using bar charts. The LOL diagrams were connected to points on the heat curve and this allowed us to see what was happening with the energy, more transparently, during the different stages of the heating of water. For some background on the treatment of energy in the modeling approach, see Larry Dukerich's presentation on a coherent <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:-LW2D3N6cwIJ:c2.clayton.k12.mo.us/4037201027494110/lib/4037201027494110/1-Energy_in_Chem-1b.ppt+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjRvyRSBc3cjHck4XiyW3IebCkDYOYHz_WdWWYp0TAR1YD5VVbyB9rWljxVfXNfe_KFeSHQIQTkl5fkJDmBmQ4bHa6JlHsDWt22U9i_70WbK9lK140BkJ0HqoZpkQNsNGvVPws1&sig=AHIEtbQYupjOC3d0XB9lygMeDjr0y-w6Fg" target="_blank">treatment of energy</a>.</span><br />
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After learning how to treat energy in different situations, we deployed our model for representing energy storage and transfer on the corresponding unit homework worksheets. Then, we whiteboarded and discussed some problems and their solutions. By the end, we had a pretty strong understanding of how to represent energy in a variety of settings.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNeXTspqoNWCfmNyFxWceauTKPbd2yvNt0GJ3btZwuKzZo9PX-cJxDqmQbHBRmo8LHFh8VvuD_FvcUSSd_OhYw074llo2nXDKyib_37ixCcbe7WxajQ6Sk8p6WRF6ZMAWsUcnH3QQTEiwh/s1600/Photo+Jul+16,+3+11+22+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNeXTspqoNWCfmNyFxWceauTKPbd2yvNt0GJ3btZwuKzZo9PX-cJxDqmQbHBRmo8LHFh8VvuD_FvcUSSd_OhYw074llo2nXDKyib_37ixCcbe7WxajQ6Sk8p6WRF6ZMAWsUcnH3QQTEiwh/s320/Photo+Jul+16,+3+11+22+PM.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
</div></div>Gary G. Abud, Jr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10082000053180484544noreply@blogger.com19