This document summarizes Derrick Willard's experience integrating iPads and social media into science instruction at Providence Day School in Charlotte, North Carolina. It describes how he has used digital tools like collaborative blogs, digital notebooks, note-taking apps, and formative assessment tools to move from a paper-based to a more paperless approach across various science courses from tropical ecology to AP Environmental Science to Science 8. The goal has been to promote creation, collaboration, and moving beyond just substituting digital tools for paper-based ones to truly transforming instruction using the SAMR model of technology integration.
1. From Possibilities to Practice:
How iPads & Social Media are Changing Science Instruction
Derrick Willard
Science Department Chair
Providence Day School
Charlotte, North Carolina
22. Enviro Sci
paperless goal
collaboration in Google Apps
projects
digital text
collaborative blog
note taking apps
whiteboard paparazzi
field guides
formative assessment tools
Welcome. I am Derrick Willard, Science Department Chair at Providence Day School in Charlotte, North Carolina. POLL NOW?
You should know a few things about me. First, I’m a serious scientist. Really. The goal of science is to discover relationships between variables.
These are some of my tools to discover relationships.
Some relationships are simple. Like the more rain that falls in a region...
...the taller the vegetation it can support. Other relationships are more complicated-counterintuitive (inverse).
I’m also a gardner, and this is my favorite tool store...
It has walls and walls of tools...
and seeds...
to help me grow food.
Finally, I’m an educator.
These are some of my tools...
To help me build relationships AND help brains grow...
This is Matt. He helped me shift...his our amazing Technology Director
We are here today to describe how a device helped shift my instruction. Diagram taken from: 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times Bernie Trilling & Charles Fadel 2009 Jossey-Bass San Francisco, CA
So, I would like to describe my journey-with help from Matt, without whom none of this would have been possible.
What were our initial goals?
Let’s go back in time and discuss why we had to do some training. iPad comes out April 2010. In our 4th classes by spring 2011-Matt gave me one to experiment with in hopes of using in Costa Rica June 2011. At the time NONE of these kids had one...
I coined this term in May of 2011. At first I was thinking of the device as a “swiss army knife” but I settled on this by May.
Tried to go to the tropics with no paper, except a text and field guide. We did. We did most of the work here using the WordPress app. This is our project page. Cut to Alice’s bird page...
Also a travel journal-rotating scribes.
First attempt at a “flipped classroom” - preloaded content to watch on the road and discuss later.
So, a few months later I wanted to take things to the next level-to go truly paperless. To lose the notebooks...
That same fall we became a Google Apps school. So, I install Gee-whizz! and we went to work. While the mobile tools were not as robust as the desktop tools, we made the best of it. One of the first projects was to do a long term data-collection project using a google spreadsheet.
I wanted students to be able to create on the iPads, so I loaded them with apps to let them create. This is a simple poster project in Pages, but we plastered them all over the kindergarten hall. Then, we built presentations on invasive species in Keynote, then went to present them to the little ones. Then we took them outside to tag plants for removal by the environmental club. We also used Explain Everything to make review presentations before a test or the semester exam...
While we did not start out with a digital text, Apple introduced its iBook format in January 2011 and this was one of the first offerings. I knew the book well as I was a reviewer on the print version. Once I checked out the features, we tossed the paper texts and started using this...
Again, we had no notebooks so I encouraged students to try out notetaking apps. I loaded the iPads with options (like...). My favorite is Noteshelf. Some students took to it quickly.
And, after about 4 weeks they quit trying to keep up with what went on the board with their fingers. They wanted 3-5 minutes at the end of class to come up and take pics, then embed the images in a noteshelf file...
I also loaded the iPads with some Audubon field guides and LeafSnap. It uses facial recognition software to help a student narrow down what type of tree leaf they are looking at. Now, it is not idiot proof! You have to teach students a little something about leaf identification first...
The one thing keeping me from a paperless class was assessment. Yes, I was still giving summative tests and quizzes on paper. At the time, a few assessment tools like eClicker and _______ were out, but I was not excited by one until Socrative. Here students are taking self-paced quiz on their iPads...that was late in the year-more on that later.
This year, I have more meager goals. Matt let me hand iPads to a class of AP students. I know these kids have been highly successful with a pen/paper system they developed over the last 13 years. I didn’t want to ask them to ditch that. So, I’m offering the device as a tool to increase efficiency and productivity.
While I won’t get everything into an iPad this time, I can reduce some of the paper. I don’t print syllabi any more for instance.
Again, I’m offering options for those that want to try this...
Matt also installed apple tv in the room. Here a student presents her Keynote project on the Sahara Desert directly from the iPad in her hand...
Matt also installed apple tv in the room. Here a student presents her Keynote project on the Sahara Desert directly from the iPad in her hand...
Now I have gotten more comfortable with using Socrative as formative assessment tool. Besides being so easy to author questions there, when students complete a quiz the software will email you an excel spreadsheet. If you have designated a right or wrong answer, it will color code the responses. If I use this at the start of a lesson, why would I spend a lot of time talking about the green cells?
This is one of our collaborative blogs. As in Costa Rica, we can use the Wordpress app to create blogs.
Now, here is the next new thing for us science nerds. This is the Vernier Lab Quest 2 probe interface device. You hook it up to a probe, then it will broadcast wirelessly to the iPad where you can control the data collection, then analyze it. (show pics or video?)
Now, here is the next new thing for us science nerds. This is the Vernier Lab Quest 2 probe interface device. You hook it up to a probe, then it will broadcast wirelessly to the iPad where you can control the data collection, then analyze it. (show pics or video?)
Now, here is the next new thing for us science nerds. This is the Vernier Lab Quest 2 probe interface device. You hook it up to a probe, then it will broadcast wirelessly to the iPad where you can control the data collection, then analyze it. (show pics or video?)
Now, here is the next new thing for us science nerds. This is the Vernier Lab Quest 2 probe interface device. You hook it up to a probe, then it will broadcast wirelessly to the iPad where you can control the data collection, then analyze it. (show pics or video?)
This year I have an 8th grade teacher running a pilot too. She is trying a few more things that I have not. Show Bonnie’s brief video?
This year I have an 8th grade teacher running a pilot too. She is trying a few more things that I have not. Show Bonnie’s brief video?