TheFlippedScientist

I have been to a number of ed-tech conferences over the years and the vast majority of speakers discuss with the righteous indignation of Ken Robinson that today's education system is a school-as-factory scene represented by images from 19th century classrooms. The  majority are romantic about a future of education, one more 'personalized' through automation, based on algorithms; yet see no irony in creating creative classrooms from automation. They believe that through the power of technology, the kids will be alright. However, I am a science teacher and I do love evidence. So as I have listened to these speakers, I always ask is this true? One skill that we desire to develop in our learners is critical thinking, one important aspect of thinking critically is recognizing confirmation bias.  Confirmation bias  is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that affirms one's prior beliefs. Having now been to these conferences, con...

So here in my first term of teaching IB HL Physics, I am exhausted and student marks are not as I have expected from what is a reasonably able group from previous examination grades. Now it is the midterm break, I am reflecting as to why this is the case As this is the first year teaching the course, I have spent  hours  marking past papers and giving detailed individualized feedback on all their work. Additionally, I am over-planning lessons to ensure that my online resources, powerpoints, activities, practicals include  every detail  of the course in order that I do not miss anything out if it comes up in examinations. To this end, I am scheduling weekly lunchtime revision classes with the students who are not meeting my expectations based on their previous assessments. The last task I set for the class before the break was to submit an experimental write up on the compulsory experiment that was done in class around the topic we are presently studying. Less...

Over recent weeks I have been honored to be involved in connecting to the students of the Pugu Innovation School in Tanzania  through Skype lessons. The lessons involve team teaching based around the   UN Sustainable Development Goals , a collection of 17 global goals set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. These goals have the power to end poverty, fight inequality, and stop climate change. I have in the last two weeks had the opportunity to co-teach with amazing global educators Bronwyn Joyce from Australia, Rachel Chisnall from New Zealand and Bernadine Reeb from Canada. The first lessons have focused on introducing the students to the SDGs from a global perspective. Bronwyn focused on clean energy related to the coal industry in Australia, Rachel on life underwater relating to the plight of Hector's dolphin in New Zealand and Bernadine access to safe water in Canadian indigenous communities. Both the students and I have learned so much! My own ...

So after traveling in South America for a couple of months during the summer break, I finally have time to make a cuppa and process my experience at International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) conference 2019 in Philadelphia. The ISTE Conference is recognized globally as the most comprehensive educational technology conference in the world. This is my second visit to the conference and has allowed me to engage in hands-on learning, exchanging ideas and networking with like-minded thinkers seeking to transform learning and teaching globally. So in this second visit to the conference what were the main thoughts I took away have already experienced the conference once before? #1 – Putting the I into ISTE One observation I made in 2017 was the emphasis of global collaboration from the perspective of the US teachers only, with what they could offer the international community. This reduced the agency of the international educators they were 'collaborating' w...

The use of animations appears as a natural fit for teaching science. Humans are visual creatures so what better way to explain how scientific concepts the electrostatics works than be a moving visual representation. Hence as a science teacher, I have endeavored to incorporate both digital and analog animations into my lessons and will be presenting my experiences at ISTE in Ju ne  as well as discussing how I use augmented reality in the classroom. Yet when exploring the research on the effectiveness of animations, there appears, at present, little evidence that students learn more from a digital moving image than they would from a still picture or a physical model. However, the research is slowly teasing out important clues on new ways to use digital animation and simulation to deepen students’ understanding of what is happening in the physical world.   As an educator, digital animations have enormous potential in science education. If created with correct insig...

A recent article  has suggested, “computational thinking” is critical thinking and therefore could be applied to any subject. But is it?  In order to determine if indeed it is one needs a definition. My research led me to a term ascribed to Seymour Papert , the inventor of Logo. Finally, I found this definition, provided by The Center for Computational Thinking at Carnegie Mellon University . Computational Thinking is the thought processes involved in formulating problems and their solutions so that the solutions are represented in a form that can be effectively carried out by an information-processing agent   So computational thinking is a way of solving problems using algorithms that can be carried out. Additionally, computational thinking can be broken down into four steps.  Decomposition -  the breaking down of a complex problem into smaller more manageable parts. Pattern recognition -  looking for similarities among and within problems....

Again the media are writing reports on how technology is a major distraction in lessons and are being removed and replaced with textbooks. In this particular case, Australia's  Reddam House's primary and junior high school classes have used e-textbooks on iPads. The consistent feedback from the students has been that they preferred pages to screens. I would have to agree!  This prompted the school to announce that students should no longer use digital textbooks, and must revert to hard-copy versions instead. Sounds sensible. The problem I have comes from the other statements in that t eachers have also found the iPads were distracting and did not contribute to students' technology skills. As school principal Mr Pitcairn states: "[Students] could have messages popping up and all sorts of other alerts, also, kids being kids, they could jump between screens quite easily, so would look awfully busy and not be busy at all." As I have stated, technology is ju...