Solar System Explorer

I've written before about two of my favourite IWB programs - Celestia and Stellarium - both for astronomy. But these are downloaded programs and you may not have permission to install them onto school computers (it depends on where you work).

I've just stumbled across a fantastic interactive website called SolarSystemScope - not only does it show the solar system in 3D like Celestia, but also from a panoramic from the Earth surface.

Lots of controls to manipulate and view. so you can represent the system as either real size and distances or an easy to understand schematic.

My jaw dropped when I saw this and it is definitely one of my new demonstration sites for when I demonstrate how to use technology in the classroom.

Where have you been?????

Why haven't I been blogging? - Good question.

Well for one I needed a break from the job - I was worried that I was forcing the issue and thought that a bit of a break was needed. I have also been working on a secret project at home and haven't had the time to actively look for new and exciting educational technology stuff.

So I'm back, the project is almost finished and I have some time to reflect on it and what I'm doing for the rest of this year.

So here are a few things I found that might be of interest to science teachers -

If you are doing airfoils and aeronautics then this applet from NASA might be useful to you.
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/foil3.html

If you are after quality educational videos you can't go past the Public Broadcasting collection at http://www.teachersdomain.org/

You can collect and share your series of choices with other teachers and educators.

Sun Motion Simulator

Just a quick one that I stumbled across -

http://astro.unl.edu/naap/motion3/animations/sunmotions.swf

This a a great simulator that has animation and a range of variable to caculate the angle of the sun at any time or place on the earth.

This is great for science and SOSE classes.

Why use Keepads?

This was on Derek Bruff''s blog the other day, and it got me thinking about why we use ARS/Clickers/Keepads/SRS/CRS.

I have been going back over my old educational psychology books to see if there was some research from the past that validates the use of ARS now. Obviously Derek has written the book on CRS in use now, but I'm talking about some of the past research on questioning.

My ed psych book from university was the Imaginatively titled "Educational Psychology" by Maltby, Gage and Berliner. I was able to glean a few key points that relate to the use of ARS now.

Why use an ARS in your teaching mix?

• Improves “wait time” I and II (Rowe 1974) - pre set counters give the right amount of time for students to formulate an answer- showing responses on screen and talking about them give time to reflect.
  
• Reduces unintentional Bias (Rowe 1974) - Everyone has the same amount of time to answer.
  
• Gives “Question Notice” to all students (Brophy and Evertson 1994) - everyone is attentive to the question because everyone has to answer it.
  
• Allows question probing through the branching - The presentation can branch to probing questions to get more detailed responses.
  
• Encourages “Intelligent Guesses” (Cole & Chan 1994) - It reduces loss of face due to a wrong answer - great for students to want try out an answer without embarrassment.
  
• Can provide academic feedback without identification (Good & Brophy)(Cole and Chan1994) - immediate feedback is important - but it doesn't identify the person with the wrong answer in front of peers.
  
• Increases perceived preparation and structure but allows flexibility. Reduces digression but provides opportunities for branching and customisation.

Using an SRS/ARS/CPS is not a toy, but a way of truly changing the way we look at questioning our students about the stuff they know and don't know to help them gain deeper understanding of what we are teaching.

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