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.