ECE 7706 Module 1: Blog

Typical Science Lesson In My Classroom
      One of the Science lessons I taught this year was on the topic of animal adaptations. The students got extremely bored simply reading their textbook, so for this lesson I made a PowerPoint presentation using the information in the students' Science book along with a few other media resources. We would go through the PowerPoint as a class, but I would allow the students to read and manipulate the slides on the Interactive Whiteboard. After someone read the slide, we would have a class discussion/Q&A regarding the information that was just presented. For example, if the slide discussed a particular animal's adaptation such as "Animals may use camouflage to help protect themselves", and I may ask the students "What animals can you think of use camouflage as their adaptation?" or "Why would an animal use camouflage to survive?". Due to the amount of time we have for Science (30 minutes), usually going through the PowerPoint would take the entire time. As an assessment, I gave my students a note card where they had to write down two facts that they found most interesting, as well as describe the vocabulary word "adaptation" in their own words. This was something I collected as the students began to pack up to head to the buses.

Technology in Science Classrooms & How I might be Able to Incorporate Tech into My Lesson Above
     I believe, especially with out students now, that is is vital that we incorporate technology into our classrooms in order to keep our students engaged, motivated and interested in each lesson. However, as Efaw stated in his research, teachers need to feel completely comfortable with technology in order to be used effectively within a lesson. Guzey and Roehrig also discussed that teachers need to have a full and complete understanding of the science content, as well as the concepts of inquiry and how to properly transform a lesson to make it inquiry-based. 
     In my past experiences even though I am comfortable with technology, it is hard for me to successfully integrate it into my lessons because I feel as though I am not properly prepared. In my school, we have monthly technology meetings where we are taught a new form of technology that we could utilize in our classrooms, but due to the fact that I have never seen them in use, I never use them. 
      Looking back on my animal adaptations lesson, it would have been beneficial for my students if they had been able to all have a say at one time, such as through the use of the app called Socrative. This technology application allows each student to send in an answer to a discussion question or even start a discussion for that matter. With this app, students use their personal form of technology to type answers to a specific code which will then post their answer on the ActivBoard. 
      I believe that even though my PowerPoint was a form of technology, it needed to be pushed further in order to truly engage my students. It may have been more beneficial if my students could have gone through the PowerPoint at their own pace either through partner, small group or individual work time. If The students were able to go through the PowerPoint in something other than whole group then I could have made it more interactive by incorporating various other links to more information.