I can’t believe that we have been in school for two weeks. Time flies when you are having fun, or in my case when you are so snowed under by classroom teaching, Science lab preparations, faculty meetings, Lamar classes and homework, family, and anything else that might come along. I can’t breath because I haven’t set aside specific times for breathing. I think I should do that right now, and schedule bathroom breaks. Those are pretty important too. (lol) Anyhow, I like so many of my classmates, are barely treading and keeping my head above water. All I can do is follows Dori’s lead and say, “Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.” This is a reference from Finding Nemo for those of you who don’t have kids, and I know that’s not the correct APA format but it’s my blog.
One of the MANY projects I have to work on for my Lamar degree is an Action Research Plan. My plan questions if using Explore Learning Gizmos in 7th grade Science increases motivation and desire to perform Science lab activities. To get this party started, I and the other junior high science teachers talked with our principal and curriculum director about Explore Learning Gizmos since it is a subscription based website. They were delighted with the idea and believed the interactive online learning environment would captivate the kids and reinforce Science concepts. This will be used as a trail period for Science since there are also Gizmos for Math. If all goes well, the Math department might begin using them also.
Once we received the okay, the subscription was paid and we were off and running. There are three teachers who teach 7th grade Science, so the curriculum director had to request three logins and passwords. Since this is a project of mine, I took my information and figured out how to use the Explore Learning website. I created my profile, and watched the tutorials on the website. I wanted to discover as much about the site that I could so I could train the other two teachers during in-service. As in-service rolled around, my principal scheduled time for a subject based meeting among the 7th grade Science teachers. I used this time to introduce the other teachers to Gizmos and as a demonstration period. I showed the teachers how to access the site and create the profile pages. I then instructed them on how to set up individual classes with student rosters for each class. Once the rosters were created, student login and passwords were assigned. We decided that the student logins and passwords would be given to the students to be placed in the front of their Science journals.
Once the rosters were created, it was time to explore the Gizmos and start playing around. I showed the teachers how to search for specific Gizmos including but not limited to heredity, photosynthesis, renewable/nonrenewable resources, solar system, food chains/webs, lunar phases, rock cycle, and force/motion. They were amazed at how many different Gizmos there were pertaining to our curriculum. Once they were comfortable with searching for Gizmos, I demonstrated how the students and teachers would download and access the Gizmos. Along with each Gizmo there is also a teacher guide, vocabulary, student evaluation, and answer key. As the other teachers read some of the questions on the Gizmo, they were amazed as what higher level of thinking skills the students were going to have to use to perform the different activities and answer the questions. I reminded the teachers that the online learning activities created an atmosphere that we could only recreate if we had unlimited funds and equipment. The Gizmos will be used as excellent representations for labs that we are not able to create on small or nonexistent budgets such as ours.
At this point, it seemed as though everyone had a pretty good idea of how to get started using the Gizmos. I answered any final questions and we adjourned the meeting. I will continue to remain in contact with the teachers to answer any questions they have or help them work through any problems they make incur. The next step is to conduct a pre-survey with the 7th grade students to find out prior knowledge and the level of use of Gizmos. I am excited. I just hope the kids enjoy doing the activities as much as I have.
