I have been interested in new and exciting ways to get students motivated about science, which is why I chose to search for science related websites and blogs. It seems that too often students dread science related activities and science classes and I wanted to find ways to change this for my students. Also, it seems as though science would be a great avenue to integrate some of the new technologies that are available for the classroom. Check out the complete list of links I have added here!
The links on my blog cover a few different topics. The Eureka! Science News site provides articles about new events in the field of science. Not only does this site keep you up to date on what is happening in science, it also has links to how to incorporate these topics into the elementary classroom. The events that are posted provide examples of curriculum requirements that may be more exciting to students than what the text book has to offer.
Although the Steve Spangler Blog also provides resources for science in the classroom, his blog also talks about the view of science education by today's teachers and students. He has great links to science experiments as well as other lesson plans that would be great to get students excited about science. It seems to me that his main reason for creating this blog is to show other teachers that science can be fun and exciting for students if they make it that way. He blogs about the downward slope of student performance in science and about why he thinks this is happening as well as what we can do to fix it. His blog is not only informational but it is also motivating to see someone so passionate about science education.
The Venier News site is quite different than the other sites I linked to this blog. Although the site does not specifically talk about science education, it is a resource for tools to use in the classroom. It has catalogs for new classroom science technology and articles with reviews of the products. It also gives viewers the opportunity to evaluate labs for use in the classroom. I was attracted to this site because in thinking back to my own science education we only had the basics. With access to these new technologies, who know how much students can accomplish in science education.
In many of our education classes we are encouraged to create tools that we can quickly reference in the classroom. We have been told that these tools will not only help us to create lesson plans quickly but they can also be a resource to refer to when parents and administrators have questions about how we are managing our curriculum. I think that RSS feeds could be a very beneficial tool for the same reasons. RSS feeds are so easily accessed and there is a benefit of having all of the information in one space. With the help of folders, these feeds can be separated depending on topic, that is for lesson plan ideas as well as helpful tools for parents. Also, as a teacher I could encourage the parents of my students to subscribe to a class blog so that they could be easily updated regarding what is taking place in the classroom. With the RSS feed they can see quickly and easily what is going on in the blog without actually having to go through and search the blog site. Also, for elementary students RSS feeds would be beneficial for starter research projects. By giving students access to RSS feeds I would be able to filter the information so they know what type of information to look for while still giving them many different options to choose from. There are many benefits to the use of RSS feeds in and out of the classroom and I look forward to seeing how effectively they can be implemented.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
My students have been using RSS feeds for two years now. I have had mixed results at times. Other times this has been very powerful. I begin the year with the students setting up Google Reader accounts. They subscribe to our class website and then to a selection of science related sites that I think might have content of interest to them. I struggle with how to manage this. I find that the best times with this are when we are just reading and sharing what we have read in spontaneous conversations. Of course there is no measured assessment this way- just my gut feeling as an educator that the student is engaged and thinking about science. The alternative is to provide an assignment to go with the reading such as a review, summary or the like. I have found that this deters conversation and engagement. However, it provides opportunity for feedback on their writing. I am curious what a soon-to-be teacher would do if, say you were launching into this tomorrow?
ReplyDelete