The InTime Video that I chose was Water Quality in the Greenhills Stream. In this video, students were taught about how scientists did not just pick up instruments and use them. This video showed the importance of keeping your instruments calibrated for the use that you need them for. The students were able to also use their probes to check for various types of data including: turbidity (cloudiness), pH and temperature.
In my classroom, the major ideas of being able to go out and measure data from a place that is dedicated to nature is not really something that would be able to be done multiple times in order to take samples and readings due to the location of my school as well as the short amount of time that students are in my class. To be able to go gather data in the fashion that was shown in the video, I would need to create a field trip including transportation for my students to get this experience. I would also be at a huge students to teacher ratio of ~1-2 teachers to 150+ students. This would promote students to go off task and then lose sight of the purpose of the field trip. If the focus was learning how to gather data multiple times and then comparatively analyze the date to prove or disprove hypotheses, I would think that it could possibly be modified to be done. I would love to be able to get the students "in the field" where they are able to step into the role of a scientist and actually collect real data which would be relevant to their lives. The other point that would be relevant from this video is to have students be reminded that the tools scientists are not infallible. They need to be taken care of and recalibrated when necessary. If this is not done, any data that is gathered using these instruments would be erroneous. It can also be used to remind students that other technologies such as computers are only as good as the user. If the user is not familiar with the abilities of the computer, either it might not be used to its potential or in a way that would create errors.
After watching several of theses videos, at some point you do wonder what steps these teachers had to go through to make the projects work the way they appear in the videos. The whole process can't be as easy as they make it look. As you mentioned Mike, not all teaching situations are conducive to these types of learning experiences. Good teachers have to be able to make the changes that will allow for their situations, and still make great learning experiences for their students. Looks like you have put a lot of thought into this video, and still found ways to be able to use it.
ReplyDeleteIt is easy to understand how your initial reaction to a video like this would be how impractical it is in a large urban school. But if the concepts are valid, perhaps some other kind of data collection and use of instruments could accomplish the same goals. One thing that comes to mind would be weather data like wind speed. That way your "field experience" could be right outside which would help alleviate the transportation and time limitation problems.
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