MY MACUL 2015 EXPERIENCE

During this conference I decided to attend the session “Failure is an Option.” This caught my eye because in society we have been told repeatedly that failure is NOT an option, I was interested to see the perspective of the speaker because this is something that we are trying to get our students comfortable when they fail a quiz and not let this deter them from improving. Mark Dohn from Tilt Shift Education started the session by showing us a video of a girl doing flips…wait for it….on a shower rod! Disclaimer: no one was hurt in the making of the video. He began by asking us what the girls learned from this dangerous activity. As many of us answered, the girls, besides knowing how to flip, not much. This is when he brought up the idea that students need to feel comfortable with failure and know that it is an opportunity for improvement. Mark, who has taught in Los Angeles before, incorporates teaching students the difference between mistakes and failures. Mistakes, as he explains, are instances that occurs “in the moment.” Failure refers to a culmination of many mistakes but overall, students should know that mistakes and failure= lessons to be learned and opportunity for improvement.

One of the biggest obstacles I have faced in placement is students shutting down and giving up when they don’t do as well in assignments or quizzes. I have been working with a student that even when he knows the answer he refrains from participating in class because he feels he “is just going to fail the class.”  One of the points of Mark’s talk was that of allowing students reflect about mistakes and failure by incorporating technology. He showed us a video of one of his students reflecting on his technology project. The student not only reflected on what mistake he did but also what allowed him to move forward and what he had learned from the mistake.  This got me thinking about the students I work with and realized that 1. They are curious every time I set up my camera to record a lesson and 2. That they love being in front of the camera. Students like to pose and talk to the camera, I began thinking why not allow them to do this but using Mark’s strategy?  Students are allowed to retake quizzes before the unit test but they have to conference with me before retaking the quiz, sometimes they might be a bit shy to talk to their teacher as opposed to talking to the camera. I will begin setting up my camera before school and allow those students that would like to do a morning reflection to video record themselves and I can review these recordings  (with consent of course)  to not only allow me to gain data about how to improve lessons but also allow students to reflect. I truly enjoyed attending the talk by Mark that further encouraged technology use in the classroom not only for lessons but also for reflection and ultimately for learning.

The second talk I attended was by no other but by the 2014 Teacher of the Year, Gary Abud. Gary is an instructional coach at Grosse-Pointe. Through his talk, Gary not only had the presentation available online but his presentation was also interactive through GoSoapBox (GSB.) GSB allows questions to be answered as well as allowing the audience to ask questions and vote the questions that majority of them find interesting to move them up the question list. I found this a great tool not only for his presentation but also for use in class, this will allow students that have the similar questions not to feel alone when asking the question. I also learned about how to work with the administration (in my future teaching job) in regard towards teacher evaluation. Gary mentioned that collaboration was essential for this to occur, and talked about the wonders of Google docs for teacher evaluation.

                           Lightning talks!

One of the last talks I attended was the lightning talks and they call them lightning talks for a reason, they are fast! Each speaker has only 5 minutes to give their talk and inspire the audience (at least they inspired me.) A few of them spoke to me in volumes. Staring with Erin Klein, whose main point was to encourage curiosity in the classroom and to allow students to pursue this curiosity. She asked a great question, are you too busy to improve? This not only applied to teachers but also to students. How are teachers working towards improving their teaching? Are the students’ voices being heard? If yeas, how? (Ok the last two questions were crossing my mind I listened to Erin’s talk.) A quote form Erin that spoke volumes to me was, “the best teachers are those that tell you where to look but not what to see.” Guiding students through biology is different than just going through the motions and “feeding” them knowledge. Students need to be allowed to discover biology through experiments and class discussions not just by sitting in a lecture and memorizing terms. Erin’s class did a Class Con (aka educational Comic Con) where students got to interact with each other and discuss different topics of the class and about how to get involved in the community. Her class volunteered in the Battered Women’s Shelter together as a class after a discussion of A Child Called It. This is something that I would like to try in the future, where biology students can collaborate together to help put in the community.

One of the lightning talks that touched me the most in a personal and educational level was that from Trevor Muir from Kent Innovation High School. Trevor told us the story of a female student who could barely stay awake during class, who was passing her classes with a C and who at times looked too tired to function. This story hit close to home for me because through middle school and majority of high school, I was that student. The reason the student was always tired was because she had to go home and take care of her siblings and clean her house while her mother worked and after all this, do her homework. I didn’t go home and take care of my siblings, my older sister did that, I instead had to help my mother at work, selling fruits and vegetables on the side of the road and acting as a translator for those customers who did not speak Spanish as well as those officers who often threatened to send us to court. There was no set schedule for my parents and I in terms of hours or days and my homework schedule got done between times I was not helping and after we went home after sundown. My parents had no days off and in turn, neither did my siblings and I. Weekend mornings were set from picking up the produce for the week and sell through the day and trying to work through a calculus problem that took 30 minutes was nearly impossible when I was interrupted very often. I managed to pass the class first semester with a B but barely passed it with a C the second semester due to my hectic schedule but to me this was a win, because I still managed to pass the class that allowed me to complete my math credits but I can see the disappointment in my teacher’s eyes that I couldn’t focus. What helped me through this was my English teacher that opened his doors early in the morning to let a couple of us finish homework, even if it mean that he had to wake up 30 minutes every day he never let us know, he told us he liked to be at school early to get caught up with things. Trevor mentioned in his story that the girl “conquered algebra by day and struggle by night.” Teachers that are able to recognize this make the different between students giving up or continuing the fight every day even when they are too tired to finish that last problem. I hope that in the future I will be someone that will help students through this struggle in the smallest ways possible just like Mr. Hoy was for me because like the quote at the end of the conference, “this conference is not for us but for the students…”

(Image obtained from Google Images)

Tech in Teach! How Tech Helped Students Through a Protein Synthesis Adventure....

                  In class we learned about the variety of tech uses in the classroom to improve student learning. One of the conflicts with teaching molecular biology is that students cannot physically hold the different components of DNA due to their micro size. I understand their frustration because I had the same issue when I was first learning about DNA replication and protein synthesis I wanted a model that I could hold. Unfortunately the school I attended did not have sufficient funds to obtain the necessary materials, bummer! I wanted my students to get the opportunity to actually “build” their own proteins and I knew that technology could make this possible!

                 Students in my honors biology classes had just recently build DNA models using Twizzlers and gummy bears but unfortunately there are not enough gummy bears to code for the different amino acids. Instead I decided to take students to the computer lab where they will work through building their own protein. 

                        I recognize that some students might work faster than others, so I differentiated the lesson. Note: my differentiated lesson allowed for those students that worked at a faster pace (Tier 3)  to have supplemental websites to more complex explanations to protein synthesis after completing the base module. Those students that learn at a slower pace (Tier 2) were given sufficient time to complete the base module that included the content that was to be learned from the lesson. For those students that learn at an “average” pace (Tier 1), they were to complete the base module and could move on to the next websites. This differentiated lesson allowed all students to go through the base module that contained the content taught during the lesson and work at their own pace.

                     Before going to the computer lab, I explained this to the students before heading to the computer lab. I was worried that students would receive this as being grouped in different intelligence levels, but instead they surprised me because I saw how many of them felt relieved that the entire class didn’t have to be working on the same thing at the same time! Below, I will walk you through the adventure my students took to build their own protein.

                    Thanks to the University of Utah for creating this great website where students can immerse themselves in transcribing and translating the message for making a protein. In this website, students are given the starting DNA sequence and they have to transcribe the mRNA sequence. The students then had to “decode” the message to figure out what amino acid to drag into the sequence and see their protein being built before their eyes! They first had to find the RNA sequence AUG, this is also known as the starting codon. Once the students found the start codon (the program did not let students move on with building their protein before finding the start codon) they began decoding the rest of the sequence to build their protein. At the end they received a picture of the protein they built!

            The learning goal of this computer lab activity was for students to be able to identify the mRNA sequence form a given DNA sequence and be able to identify the amino acids coded by that mRNA to build a protein. This computer lab activity was a supplemental to the in-class worksheet that students that finished the base module moved on to the following modules to see enzymes in action and a more complex look into DNA replication, transcription and translation. To see a copy of the worksheet that students were given click below:

                                  Tech in Teach- Protein Folding Worksheet

           Although this activity could be done (and was done prior to the computer lab activity) without technology, it was more organized for the students to have their own computer and work through the problem alone. I felt that using technology enhanced student understanding due to the responses I received in their post computer lab worksheet. This helped us teachers (my mentor teacher and I) because we did not have to obtain materials for the entire 90 students we have in total. This also allowed for students to work on their own as opposed to having to be in groups and having to all share the material and not each getting the opportunity to build their own.  Technology also allowed me to use resources from other institutions (University of Utah) to improve student learning. Having technology facilitated the differentiated  lesson I had plan for my students. Incorporating technology into the science classroom has facilitated student learning through not only providing students with a visual representation of what occurs in the molecular level but also through providing students with an opportunity to explore the different processes involved in protein folding.

Edubloggers!

One of the Edubloggers I decided to respond to was Elena Aguila (http://www.edutopia.org/blog/what-i-wish-id-known-new-teacher-elena-aguilar ). Elena blogs as part of Edutopia’s collaborative blogging. She wrote a wonderful piece on a list of things she wished she knew as a new teacher (ding ding that’s most of us hehe.) The blog quickly caught my attention because if this was something that she would have liked to know then it must be important for me to know. As aquick summary here is the list of what she wished she knew:

1. This will get better

2. Always work from the heart

3. They will remember this about you

4. Be open to surprises

5. Find a coach

6. If you can’t find a coach …move.

She talked about how even though it might seem that things are at their worst, they will get better. She encourages new teachers not to be deterred by how complicated it might seem at first. She also emphasizes that teaching should come from the heart, students can see right through someone whose heart is not there while teaching. You make an impact on students, positive or negative. This is important to keep in mind as you build rapport with the students. IT is a lot better if students remember you as someone who positively affected their lives. Students are full of surprises and that’s one of the beauties of teaching, you get surprised by students in the most unexpected ways. Finally, she also emphasizes on the importance of finding a mentor, someone you can go to when you have questions or concerns, someone that can show you the ropes. She suggests that if you can’t find a good mentor, move! How can you develop in an environment with little to no support? I truly enjoyed reading her blog especially as an upcoming first year teacher!

The second edublogger I responded to was Christ Lehmann (http://practicaltheory.org/blog/2014/11/18/dont-make-presentation-day-the-worst-day/#comment-2515 ) Chris talked about one of my favorite topics, making presentation day not the worst day! With each group going up to present it might take the entire class period. Most students will be giving similar style presentations and I don’t know about the rest of you but I have a difficult time sitting still through long lectures. Instead, Chris offers other options with similar benefits to a presentation. HE suggest using Read-arounds. In Read-arounds studnets have to read at least 2 pieces of work form their peers and write a response.  He emphasizes the importance of classroom management while doing this. The secont option is Tech in Stations, this is where students at each station give a poster presentation and students can fill out exit tickets to assess them on what they learned from the poster session. The other alternative that caught my eye was the gallery walk. This is something we did in our SEL class when presenting our curriculum we had to come up with. It was a good way to not only display work but also engage learning. 

The Great World of Paddlet!

What has amazing organization and super friendly reminders? PADDLET! The wonderful Paddlet Team (Katie, Jeremy, Kelsey, and Jessica ) introduced the class to the greatness of Paddlet. The first thought that came to mind was, ok so we are going to learn how to organize our stuff in a website? The thing is, Paddlet is so much more than just an organizer, it’s another wonderful tool to have as a teacher. Paddlet can be used to store lessons, videos, quizzes and more. As Katie, Jeremy, and Kelsey walked us through the steps of creating a Paddlet I was thinking about different ways I can make use of this tool. Not to mention that the emails form the website are great! They tend to have a very welcoming message on them J coming back to how the 3 wonderful people walked us through the setting up process and the features of Paddlet, they were incredibly helpful. Katie, Jeremy and Kelsey walked us through the process of setting up our Paddlet account and they were all walking around and helping us to make sure that we had a positive experience with Paddlet. This was the first Tech Tools in Use we had and I have to say that they paved the road for the rest of us. Jeremy, Katie, and Kelsey did an amazing job at walking us through the main points of Paddlet and helping us create our own.

I created a Paddlet for one of the upcoming practice teach lessons I was about to implement in my placement (see picture below.) I created mine on protein folding and the different aspects of protein folding. I was inspired to create more units like this because of the organization and easy access, not to mention that it is very user friendly. I was able to use Paddlet to organize the ideas I had for future biology lessons. I also learned that Paddlet can be used as a collaboration center. For example, we made our own Paddlet example and the whole class posted theirs on a Paddled board, easy access for all! When we were looking at each other’s Paddlet, this made it so much easier to be able to look at everyone’s. This can be used in the classroom as a brainstorm activity.

 I am thinking of trying this with the honors biology students. They can work in groups to create a skit of the different phases of cell division. Then they will all post them in the class’ Paddlet board so that everyone can have access. We will not only review the videos as a class for review but individually, students will have access to the videos for future studying. This is only an example of what I was inspired to try in the classroom as a result form the presentation. I also saw another group make use of Paddlet during theit own Tech Tools in Use presentation. This further goes to show what a great collaboration and organizational tool this is! I look forward to implementing my ideas of using Paddlet in the classroom, will update when I do to reflect on how it turned out :)

Wise words from David Thenune...

         

    (Taken from David Theune's Blog)  

                  David Thenue gave a great presentation in our class about various topics in the classroom, I especially was struck by the use of technology in his classroom. When he first mentioned that he used video cameras in his classroom as part of projects, he had my attention! Now, when I was younger, I would avoid the public at all costs so this excitement about cameras might come as a shock to many who knew me back then. But what David was talking about was something different than sitting in front of the camera and being scared to death, no the way he presented this was about empowerment to the students. He mentioned how by only giving students 6 second on camera and they will surprise you, and the videos he showed us sure surprised me. He showed us some "6 second Shakespeare" videos that his class was involved in making. Students not only had to summarize the story in 6 seconds, they also had to be creative in doing so. In all the videos I saw, students were having fun while being engaged in learning! This didn't even involve students being on camera, their voices were heard but their faces didn't have to be on display, big win for the more shy student! This way students are not afraid to participate in class projects, they seemed more excited to participate than scared. Granted that when you have a teacher as excited as David, you are bound to be so yourself. I thought about how I could integrate this in my own classroom. I realized that if students could do "6 seconds of Shakespeare" then why not have "30 minute science?" I even talked about this with my mentor teacher. She thought it was a wonderful idea to have students summarize or even act out what they have learned in science. More specifically we talked about doing this with our photosynthesis lesson. Students were to make a 30 second skit on one of the 3 stages of photosynthesis! Students would have fun creating the skit as well as benefit from reviewing the material! This was super exciting for me for this will be the first time I would be using cameras (besides using it to record my lessons) in the classroom. Unfortunately there was not enough time to implement this plan in the class, but we have future plans on using a similar technique with the cell respiration lesson.

                              Another major point from David's presentation that I found interesting was the fact that he invites parents into his classroom. He talked about calling/emailing/smoke signaling his students' parents about the essay reading events he has in his classroom. Granted that not all parents will show, he still has some parents show to read students' essays.  He makes an effort to include parents in his classroom to showcase the hard work that students put into the assignment. This shows how great he cares about his students and the parents get to have a glimpse of the great work their student is doing in the classroom. This is something that I would love to implement in my future teaching, having a classroom in which parents are welcome to attend would be wonderful. As teachers, we must work alongside parents to ensure that the students are being given the support to thrive not only in the classroom but also outside of it. David talked about many other great ideas, such as making the charity essay a contest (who should we donate money to?) Students are not only entering a contest but they are also doing research in the process, they must use the claim, evidence, and reasoning, in their essay. They must be able to defend their claim and although students are doing work, they are interested and engaged because it relates to "real life."  I look forward to implementing some of David's practices in my own classroom!

To Tech or not to Tech?

"The most important thing that schools can do is not to use technology in the curriculum more, but use it more effectively"                                    -John G. Palfrey 

              A question that has been asked by many educators is, how wise and effective is it to use technology in the classroom? Is it a tool to further education or a distraction that halts education? How can we as educators assure that we use technology effectively? I was intrigued when we were asked to find out about technology in our placement. I was interested in finding out the different technology available for the students and staff. As important , how is technology being managed to optimize its usage?
             After a survey done at my placement I discovered that we had quite a bit of technology available. I learned that we had Chrome book carts that can be  borrowed for in class activities. The students also have a variety of computer labs they can use to get their work done. These computer labs can be reserved by teachers for class activities, woah! I began to wonder how was technology being managed at my school. I typed in different websites *drumroll please*  Students are not allowed to visit social media websites such as Facebook, even if students try to access them, they are blocked. Email websites such as google and yahoo are allowed to visit. I expected this since students are actually given their own google email by the district. The students are also not allowed to visit certain websites besides social mediam for example, they are not allowed to visit the Red Cross Website from the school's network among others. This is to help prevent distractions to students when they are in the computer lab or even if they are in their own devices, while using the school's wireless connections, they still have these restrictions. 
              How else is technology regulated at my placement? I n order to use computer labs, teachers must sign up online to use them. Aside form the computer labs, there is also the media room available for students. Students were able to go during study hour to the media center but that has recently changed. If students need to use a computer they must do so during lunch. I think this is restrictive to students because to some students, the only time that they can use a computer is at school. Some teachers do offer their room after school for students that need to type up a report for their class or need to do research. In my placement, there is a designated group of media specialist that not only advocate for technology use but they are also active in writing grants to fund this. At the beginning of the school year, teachers attended a professional development meeting in which different uses of technology was presented. In my placement, attendance and grades are all recorded online. Teachers are to take attendance at the beginning of each class and record it. This allows for the new attendance policy to be more efficient. Teachers are also encouraged to have a website in which students can access the class' information.
            Overall, students get a wide variety of technology at my placement. They are also being familiarized with technology since many will be using it daily in their future. For example, we have students in the honors biology and AP biology classes write up their lab reports. This involves students using excel to analyze their results. This allows the students to gain experience with excel and at the same time gain more experience in writing lab reports. Technology is well regulated at my placement and many measures are taken to ensure minimal distractions to students. I would like to see technology integrated in learning in my classroom, we have yet to use technology as a learning tool outside of the general uses of technology. 

Connections Across Disciplines: Fold 'em

Looking over the lessons of my fellow peers, one instantly caught my attention. Not only was the lesson planned to incorporate technology into the classroom but it also allowed the students to create an experiment as well as incorporating a game into all this. The lesson plan was brilliantly thought out and broken off into different parts; building protein knowledge and setting up/running an experiment.

Students build a KWL chart on proteins to see what they Know, Want to learn and what they Learned. This is a great way to assess background knowledge as well as what the students learned from the lesson. Reviewing proteins and the scientific method is a great way to engage students in science and at the same time allow them to use technology. Imagine walking into a classroom where you’re able to make the choice of what technology you want to use to work on (computer, ipad, cellphone ect) and learn from those experiences what works best. This was incorporated into the lesson. The group (Grace, Meghan and Melissa) incorporated the BYOD idea into their lesson plan. I thought this was a great use of technology because it allows the students to see the differences between the devices and learn for future reference which one helps them achieve the work.  They get to experiment with the different devices, record their findings and draw conclusions from them.

The game was a protein folding game that not only allows students to see the visual representation of folding proteins but it also helps science! (link to the website: http://fold.it/portal/). This incorporation of having a visual aid helps the students in the classroom to be exposed to the material in a different way. This helps reinforce what was learned in class and play a game at the same time! Students learned about proteins, scientific method and the use of technology all in the same lesson. I think it’s great because they way these three concepts were incorporated was engaging and fun for the students.

Having students run their own experiment allowed them to see and do the scientific method rather than just learning about it. In a sense, they were researchers themselves. Giving students that researcher identity put them in the mindset of investigating. The lesson was them concluded with an exit ticket where students answered questions about what they learned, protein folding is important and how it relates to their health. They get to think about protein folding outside of just a scientific term! And this is why this lesson plan was an interesting and intriguing one for me.

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