Why is the scientific method (SM) important?

The above presentation is a quick overview of the major parts of the scientific method.  As you work through your lab simulations on the Campbell website, think about what steps your are focusing on.

Most students have a hard time with making conclusions.  It is a difficult task because you have to put together so many different pieces into a logical explanation.

Here is a short online game that tests your ability to look for key pieces of information, make small inferences and come to conclusions.  The questions get tougher the higher the dollar amount.

In class we will be applying what we know about the scientific method to our own experiments.  Our experiments will fall into four categories.  Each type of experiment will have its benefits.  1 and 2 are designed to give all students a common experience and develop your prior knowledge and are typically what you may have had in previous courses.  3 and 4 are higher levels on inquiry where the student is more in control of how they want to approach the question and experiment.  These types of experiments are often more challenging for students because there isn't "one right answer".

1.  Confirmation - we know the expected outcome of our experiment and we try to confirm the principle or idea

2.  Structured - a question will be presented for you and you'll use a guided procedure

3.  Guided - a questions will be presented for you and you'll create your own procedure

4.  Open inquiry - you begin with the question and create your own procedure

Section One - Graphing Response

Two weeks down!  Congratulations to everyone who turned their first e-mail response in on time and earned their 10 points.  Since this is your first response and its purpose was to give me a baseline on your writing skills, everyone earned 10 points for work turned in on time.  That being said, lets look at what we came up with.

First, lets look at the ideas you and your classmates came up with.  Below is a short Prezi presentation summarizing the ideas your classmates described in their e-mail responses.

So, what do we need to work on in terms of the structure of our essays?
1.  Answers that were only two or three sentences long - not enought to elaborate on your thoughts and include good detailed examples.
2.  Punctuation - please capitalize and punctuate your writing!  If AP reader struggle to follow your writing they won't read what you wrote.
3.  Examples - a good example needs to be more than a sentence.  You need to state your example and then elaborate on it by adding supporting details and explaination.
4.  Formatting - remember to organize your ideas.  Don't waste time with several sentences of an introduction.  Get right to the point and begin answering your question.
5.  Run-on ideas - It's ok to seperate your ideas into a couple of sentences rather than one long confusing sentence.  (Hint - re-read your answer before you submit it.  Better yet, have someone else read it)

What did we do well that we need to keep doing?
1.  Begin with a quick restating of the question and the beginning of your answer.
2.  Give MULTIPLE examples!  The more examples with details, the easier it is for your reader to understand your arguement.
3.  Ending your response with a re-cap of our initial arguement.  This quickly reminds your reader of what you are trying to explain to them.

Summer e-mail and website updates

Greetings AP Students and welcome to section 1!

I've created a Google spreadsheet that lists each of the e-mail assignments (remember to visit http://milliga9.weebly.com/ap-bio-summer.html to get the topic for each section) and grades.  This will help you track what you have or haven't done and your grade.  This will allow you to notify me if there is anything wrong with your scores as soon as possible since we don't have access to Zangle and Student Connect during the summer.  As soon as the semester starts your grade will be entered as one assignment into Zangle.

I will allow re-writes on e-mail questions as long as your first attempt was turned in ON TIME :) 

I was told today that the login and password for Campbell Biology wasn't working properly.  A new set was e-mailed out to everyone on 6/20.  Please let me know immediately if you have any problems.

Graphing - remember to use the graphing packet to review.  We're all going to be at different levels when it comes to making and reading graphs.  If you need a little boost above just the packet, you may want to use the Campbell website (www.campbellbiology.com).  When you login, look towards the bottom of the page for Concept 1.5.  The first link below it is called Graph It:  An Introduction to Graphing.  This practice will do the graphing for you and ask you to do more analyzing.  Check it out.

AP Bio Summer Work.....dun dun dun

Ok next generation of biology dorks, here's the scoop on your summer work.

 1. Pick it up :) If you didn't pick up your packet before June 14th, you can stop in during summer school registration or the first week of summer school (more details will be posted).

 2. You can do as much or as little as you want, but the work has been divided into 5 2 week sections (actually the last one is only one week). E-mail questions must be turned in by the listed due date.

 3. E-mail questions - they are listed on the class website under the AP Bio Summer tab and are due every two weeks. These are the only assignments that will be grades and the grade will be a part of your 1st marking period grade.

 4. Now that might make it sound like you don't need to do the rest of the work, but that's not the case. The work assigned (notes, practice, reading, quizzes) are designed to help you focus your ideas and review your content knowledge.

 5. To help you with your summer work and ensure that you are on the right track, answer keys will be posted AFTER the due date. Suggested answer keys for chapter notes will be posted all summer. I would recommend reading the chapters and taking your own notes - then using my notes to add anything you missed or didn't understand during your first read.

 6. Please contact me if you have questions - go forth this summer and use your powers for good!

Wicked Problem Project - Final Presentation

The Problem and Solution
We have a high rate of absenteeism and tardiness at our high school.  As a result, many students miss out on labs and activities.  With truancy such a problem, students would also often miss make-up lab sessions held before or after school.  In past years, I saw a make-up rate of between 20 and 30%

As a possible solution to this problem, I developed a plan where students could go to our class website to print out lab handouts and watch a video of our lab.  The goal was to give the students an overview of the lab in the video and allow them to make their own observations.

TP, TC and PC
What are the key interactions among TP & C that make this solution so promising?
The major incorporation of technology was in the use of our class website and the creation of our video.  Technology in this project was a means of convenience and convergence of content.  By creating videos, students had the chance to see what we did in lab rather than just copying data from another student.

The content of the labs includes data recording, making observations and data analysis.  Assignments in class build upon what the students observed in these labs and as a result our Pedagogy becomes the higher order thinking questions and technical knowledge required to complete our crime scenes at the end of a unit.

Describe how you think your students will experience this problem differently/better with your new solution?
Most students comment that this solution was a convenient way to make-up their work and they liked that they could view the video over and over until they got what they needed.  One student even left me a question in the survey asking if I would leave the videos up until the semester was over so they could use it later to review.  The biggest complaint about this method was the fact that students did not get to work with their peers and missed our on the collaboration.  a couple students mentioned that they did not get the same experience as their classmates and missed out on burning things in class because that activity sounded fun.  I am hoping that this means of making up labs will end up encouraging students to be in class because they felt like their version was not as "fun" as their peers.  It's nice to see that this project may have a twofold effect on my students.


Links to
Part A blog entry.
Part B blog entry.
Part C blog entry.
Part D blog entry.

Group Leadership Project

What tool did your group use to deliver the PD tutorial?  Why?
We decided to create a tutorial on Google Apps for Education (GAFE).  Our group was intrigued by the usefulness of Google Apps and how they can be incorporated into classrooms and school districts.  Our tutorial is composed of three main sections.  The first section is an introduction of GAFE to educators who many not be aware of its capabilities.  The second sections explores what we called the 5 C's of GAFE - curiosity, collaboration, creativity, communication and critical thinking.  We tried to answer the question of how Google Apps can encourage each of the 5 C's in classrooms and through a district by describing some of the Apps and how they could be used.  The third section takes a closer look at using forms within Google Docs and how Flubaroo can be used to help grade student responses.

We decided to use iMovie to put together our final presentation.  We thought that iMovie would be the easiest tool to use that we all had in common.  I had the pleasure of compiling each of our sections and adding the voiceover.  After a big learning curve I found that it was easiest to import small sections of our presentation at a time and complete the associated voiceover.  The biggest problem for me in the end was getting our video under 10 minutes.  It helped that we had three main sections so that I could trim about a minute off each section so no one person's work would be edited more than someone else's.


What did you learn during the development process of the final product?
The most valuable lesson I learned from putting together such a large video was practicing voiceovers.  The more I read the script out loud, the quicker I got with fewer mistakes - I did twist my tongue a couple of times :)  Also, once the video was done I found out that Flubaroo is pronounced flew-ba-roo not flub-a-roo as I thought.  I guess I just had Flubber on the brain!

What would you do differently if you had to develop a similar product again?
I don't think I would change anything with the content of our project.  I would change the way in which our group communicated.  This became a case where technology was not helpful!  We had so many issues with conferencing and chatting that it became distracting to our project.  While we worked well on our individual parts, it was hard to get together to compile our work together so our work fell on one person.

As frustrating as this project became, I learned a lot and I am thankful for that.

Professional Learning Plan

My most important goal as I set forth to accomplish in CEP 810, 811 and 812 was to find meaningful ways to incorporate technology into my classroom.  I've seen many teachers over the years use "technology" as a buzz word without really understanding what it meant.  I realized I didn't want to be one of those teachers who simply said they used technology, but didn't have evidence of its use.

I feel that I am working hard towards three of my original goals that are intertwined with each other.
1.  Discover and create ways in which to usefully incorporate technology into my classroom.
2.  Incorporate technology into activities and units which I already use in my courses.  (long term goal)
3.  Develop new activities which usefully incorporate technology in my courses. (long term goal)

An example of how I've pushed my envelope for these goals is creating videos of labs and activities as a part of my WPP.  These videos give absent/suspended/homebound students the chance to view what occurred during our labs and have similar experiences to the students who were in class.  Before this course I had never created a video or screencast with a voiceover.  Now I can't imagine how I survived before them :)  I need to continue to work on this set of skills as I can see how useful it will be in a science course.

The biggest lesson that I have learned over the course of these three courses is to make the use of technology meaningful.  If students don't see the importance of the technology portion of a lesson, the entire content can be lost.  This is also the most important idea that I want to bring back to my department and we continue to work on planning for this year and next.

As I look forward to the rest of this year I want to continue working on incorporating technology into my classroom.  I don't want to forget what I've learned over the last 5 months or move away from using my new skills because its easier to fall back to what I've been doing for years.  In times of stress we fall back on what is easiest for us - I want to be stressed (in a good way!) about finding as many ways to connect with my students thought technology as possible yet making them meaningful.  As I've tried new things this school year, I see a definite disconnect with learning the content when the technology used doesn't fit.

I've enjoyed my work over the past few months and I think that is why achieving my goals has come easier than other goals I've set for myself in the past.  I don't think that my technology goals are easier by any means, I think that I see value in them and as a result they are easier for me to work towards.

The next item from my original goal set that I would most like to work on is to bring my skills gained in these courses back to my department/school in order to reinforce my skills and apply what I've learned.  I have had the pleasure of giving a tutorial on Weebly to my fellow Curriculum Leads and it has been neat to see each of our departments use both websites and wiki's as a way to communicate.

Based on what I saw accomplished from my Goals, I created a short Prezi.  I liked how the format allowed me to keep my ideas simple and to the point.  I've already printed out a copy of it and put it on the cork board by my desk to continue to remind me of how far I've come.