It's a Matter of Crime!

One of the brightest parts of a very dreary time of year is our annual crime lab project. The main objective of the 9th grade biology crime lab is to provide our students with an opportunity to work in a collaborative setting to solve a problem while showing proper lab technique and technology skills. Some of the topics and techniques are review from other activities in the year and some are completely new to students.  We kick off the project with a lesson in evidence collection and technique from Joan Turner, City of Suffolk Community Outreach Coordinator and City of Suffolk Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney, Matthew Glassman. 
Here is how the project works...One teacher is the victim, one teacher is the guilty suspect and the rest of the faculty are other suspects to the crime. Students are divided into investigative teams (ideally 3 to a group)based on common free bells when possible.  Each group is then assigned one faculty suspect to interview, gather fingerprints and take a hair sample.  Based on hair and fingerprint analysis, the list of 40 (this number changes each year) suspects  drops to the Top 10. Students submit their choices via a Google form that must be completed by a deadline. By using karyotype analysis

the list is shortened to four.  Using blood type analysis, students narrow the list to the final two suspects.  The final analysis of DNA identifies the guilty suspect. Testing that helps set the scene and motive of the crime include drug analysis and blood spatter pattern analysis.  While conducting the research and completing the lab work, students must document their findings with photos and notes collected on their ipad and shared in a Google doc with their group members.  Students must submit a packet of information on their first deadline which includes a final four data analysis chart, search warrant and crime scene sketch. The second deadline is a “mockumentary” video which is created using iMovie on the iPad. The video includes an explanation of the testing completed, results, and explanation of motive.  The project is conducted over a three week time frame.


My colleague, Scott Fowler, and I have been doing the crime lab project for the 13 years we have been teaching together.  With the addition of iPads, we are able to go mostly paperless and communicate with groups through shared Google docs. We have also changed from requiring a final paper to producing the "mockumentary" video.  I think this has allowed us to get a better understanding of student comprehension of the parts of the project since we have the opportunity to hear their explanation and see their interpretations.

Crime Lab Information Packet  

 

Crime Lab Grading Rubric

As always, every project leaves me with ways to improve and refine the process. Here are my main tips if you choose to do something of this nature.

1. Intermediate deadlines are time saver.

2. Common free time for students is extremely helpful.

3. Clear grading expectations should be presented at the beginning of the project.

4. No last names in projects must be reminded to your students!

5. Patience, sense of humor and popcorn are a must.

To learn more ways in which I am using technology in my classroom, follow me on Twitter @eglassman757.

Thinking Critically with Video Projects

One of my main goals of adapting iPads into my classroom is to continually challenge the quality of work that my students submit. I want to make sure that it shows understanding of the subject matter as well as independent critical thinking. I also want to have the work be something that my students can use when they are studying for the exam at the end of the semester. The most recent work that my students have done required them to present  videos on an assigned topic dealing with Protein Synthesis (project information link) and Human Genetics.  I then used a grading rubric to assess, and the best of each category was then compiled into a video to share with all students and their parents. This can be done with any subject matter and any iPad experience level. The apps we used were Explain Everything, Tellagami and iMovie. All three are paid apps, but worth the cost. As always, Explain Everything is amazing with giving students the ability to do pretty much anything they want with creating or presenting information. Tellagami allows for the creation of an avatar with a background of the creator's choosing. Finally, iMovie allows for the merger of the different videos in to one seamless product. As always, focusing on the push and pull of videos with the camera roll will give the best success for work flow. As long as your students can get their videos to the camera roll, you can publish!


DNA, RNA & Protein Synthesis Video Project from Elizabeth Glassman on Vimeo.




Human karyotype genetics project from Elizabeth Glassman on Vimeo.

I used this project format for our chapters on DNA, RNA and Protein synthesis and then on our chapter dealing with human genetic disorders. In both cases, I had five topics, with four groups of students covering each topic. The "best of show" for each category was awarded bragging rights and a few bonus points on their project grade. Both of these projects have been great preparation for the "mockumentary" movies that we will be making at the conclusion of our crime lab!

To learn more ways in which I am using technology in my classroom, follow me on Twitter @eglassman757.

57 Heads Are Better Than One

As I get myself organized and prepared to start a new semester tomorrow, I want to reflect on the cumulative semester exam review project that was a great success for my students.  I decided to take a risk and have them create an exam review book that each student contributed to. The parameters of the project are found at the link, Glassman Biology Book Creator Midterm Project.  I was inspired to do this project from Greg Kulowiec's workshop at the Ed Tech Teacher iPad Summit in November 2013.  

Basically, I divided up the topics of the semester into 20 sections and then put students in groups of 2 or 3, each group in charge of a specific topic. Because I have 20 shared iPads, I found it logical to have 20 sections to the book to avoid sharing conflicts.  Each group was to summarize the topics, create questions and provide answers to those questions. All groups used Book Creator to submit their work as a Google Doc to me. The other apps that were used are Explain Everything  and ThingLink.  I gave them a week to complete their work during class and submit a shared ePub with me so I could then merge all of the "mini books" into one complete book for all of my students before exam week began.   

If you decide to make a project like this, consider these suggestions for smoother work flow for you and your students. 

1) Make sure all students are saving books in the same format so they can be merged later on.  I chose the square format. I had one group not follow this formatting guideline, and they were not happy when they had to copy everything into a new book. Book Creator will not allow you to change the format once you start a project. 

2) Have a soft deadline two days before the final deadline to check accuracy and depth of content.  This was the best part of all. I found myself saying, "This is good, but you know you can make it better." My students were ok with it, and ended up turning in much better end results with the midway edit. 

3) Remind them that this project is PUBLISHED! That was the biggest carrot of all. Knowing that their names were attached to the project that could be found on the internet created a bigger sense of ownership. 

4) Make sure all submissions have first names only to protect your students.

5) Shorten longer url links (we used bitly) and include them so that anyone using the PDF version of the book can get to the links that are embedded in the ePub version. 

5) When submitted to you, be certain that students have make the title of the book in BookCreator and on Drive the number of the question and the topic. For example, the first chapter of our book is prefix/suffix review so that chapter was submitted as 1PrefixSuffix.  I had 20 books to merge, and this was a huge time saver. 

Once I finalized the twenty mini-books into one book, I shared it with my students and their parents as both an ePub and PDF.  Remember, not everyone has an iDevice at home when you have a shared iPad classroom. My final requirement for each student was to save the book to their Evernote digital portfolio. Please use the following instructions to access the version of the book that works with your computer, iPad, or internet accessible device. Here is a quick reminder in the difference in the ePub and PDF versions of the book. 

ePub files can be opened in iBooks, BookCreator, Evernote, and Dropbox. This format allows you to use the interactive links and videos right in the book.

ePUB version of Glassman Biology 1st Semester Review Book 2013

PDF files can be opened in Drive just as you would open any PDF file. This file version is not interactive, but links have been provided to access that information on the internet.  

PDF version of Glassman Biology 1st Semester Review Book 2013

Please let me know if you have any questions with accessing the book! Happy New Year and may 2014 be a year of taking risks with technology in your classroom!

To learn more ways in which I am using technology in my classroom, follow me on Twitter @eglassman757.

iPads and Projects and Apps, OH MY!

Some of my amazing colleagues from
Norfolk Academy during the conference.
L to R: Scott Fowler, ElizabethGlassman,
Maria Moore, Susie Coker and Ed Patterson

I had the fortunate opportunity to attend and present at the Ed Tech Teacher iPad Summit in Boston November 12-15, 2013.  For any educator who is thinking about using iPads, just starting to incorporate iPads or is a master iPad user in their classroom, this is the conference for you. This was my second time to attend the conference, and once again my brain was filled with so much amazing information I am now just able to put it in writing. Just over a year ago, I was introduced to some of the most influential educators I have encountered. The team of Beth Holland, Shawn McCusker and Greg Kulowiec have emerged as the long distance tripod to balancing the world of the iPad. They are my go-to people with questions and ideas. Their influence brought me from being a novice iPad user to now being a knowledgeable resource in my school.  They are the reason I blog, tweet and take risks.My colleague, Ed Patterson (@espatterson), and I presented at the conference about using iPads in the middle school science classroom and our experience over the past year.  You will find the resources to our session at the following links.

iPads and Projects and Apps, OH MY! Prezi
Live Binder Resources for iPads and Projects and Apps, OH MY!

As with any work in progress, I wish I had more time to share the amazing work of my students and colleagues during the quick 50 minute session. What a marvelous world of inquiry I am a part of.

I am currently working on a project with my students that I created while I was at the conference. We are doing an "appsmash" with Explain Everything, ThingLink and Book Creator to make a semester review book for all of my students to use for their exam review.  Click here to access the project information.  The final product will be shared through Google Drive and saved to each student's Evernote portfolio. Stay tuned for the final product! I will post it after their deadline next week.

To learn more ways in which I am using technology in my classroom, follow me on Twitter @eglassman757.

All You Have to Give is Twenty Percent

This is my 10th blog post and we are in the 10th month of the year, so I figured I had to go with something to do with 10 in this blog post.  So, what is better than doing a multiple of 10 and go to 20? Either I have your curiosity piqued or you are not a fan of my middle school logic and are ready to move on to another activity for the day.

You may or may not be familiar with Daniel Pink who is the best selling author of five books dealing with changing the world of doing work.  As a professional development opportunity a couple of summers ago, I read Drive by Pink.  In his book, Pink describes the effectiveness of Google's twenty percent time in which employees are allotted twenty percent of their time to work on a project of their own interest. After getting excited about the idea of giving students time to work on an open-ended project that they design, my colleague, Scott Fowler, and I decided to take this concept and use it in our classrooms to study the scientific method. We designed a project focused on creating a water filtration device design to fit into a two-liter bottle. This idea came from Scott's experience traveling with the Norfolk Academy Global Health Fellows to Haiti in the summer of 2012 when they met with local children and families to discuss and promote the importance of using potable water for hygiene and cooking. We watched our students wrestle with everything from affordability of materials to filtering microbes that the finest of filters can't detect. Bottom line, did they create the next water device? No. However, did we study the scientific method in a way to open their eyes to real world problems and issues? Absolutely.

This year we decided to keep the valuable project time and devote every Friday of first term to another twenty percent time project. Our charge to students was to design a green roof design for our geographic area, focusing on a specific variable of each group's choosing (insulation, run-off, drainage, etc).

The following list of ideas and suggestions chronicles how I worked with my students through this year's project.

1. Introduce with something attention grabbing. We used the NBC video clip about green roofs, Green Roof Saves Chicago. This clip may seem little outdated, but it features one of our own Academy families who served as a resource for our students. You can follow their website at the link, Our Green House. There is also a more recent clip from WVEC 13.

2. Provide parameters to the project, but not rules. You can find my project guidelines by clicking here.

3. Be clear on your expectations for grading. You can find my project rubric by clicking here .

4. Have a pre-determined calendar of dates with intermittent deadlines. I included that with the project guidelines.

5. Keep the twenty percent time "sacred" from everything else. Show your students that you value this time every week.

6. Because we use shared iPads, we had to make sure students could access information out of class.  One of the biggest "mistakes" we learned together was the idea to rely on Evernote as a storage place for group information. We are using Evernote for their lab portfolios, but they are single user accounts. There is not way to do collaborative sharing in those documents. Next year, I will require that all information is stored as a Google Doc for the groups to share. 

Ideas were fantastic, at times frustration was high, but overall, we had similar results to last year ... students were learning, doing research, building prototypes, submitting reports and then told to make things better. This was a true lesson in being committed to a problem and dealing with having to modify and rebuild when a first attempt didn't necessarily come through. This project definitely held our students to the four core tenants of our middle school experience: respect, commitment, grit and toughness.  

To learn more ways in which I am using technology in my classroom, follow me on Twitter @eglassman757.

APPsolutely SMASHing!

It amazes me that what I think I am going to blog about at the beginning of the week is totally different than what ends up being posted! I finally experienced the magic of AppSmashing! What is that you might ask? This is when you take combinations of apps to end up with a final product that couldn't be created with one application. For my students, we used Explain Everything, Nova Elements and Evernote to create their first digital portfolio entries. This week started off with an activity that I have done for years. We are in the midst of reviewing basic chemistry to prepare for organic compound mastery in the next couple of weeks. To bring some excitement to the practice of making covalent bond models, we use gummy bears for atoms and toothpicks for bonds. This is a fun way to keep kids interested, and sneak a sweet treat in on the side! To combine the technology with the traditional, I decided that this assignment would be the first activity that my students would complete and turn in using their digital biology portfolio. Before doing the lab, I had each student set up an account on Evernote using the iPad app. As with every class account we have, I make sure my students keep a log of usernames and passwords.

What I like about Evernote is that they can access their account from the app on the shared iPad. We do not need them to make any iPad account adjustments within class.  As long as they log out of the app at the end of the bell, it is ready for the next student to use.  I also like Evernote because students can access their work from any internet source at home or at school.  Once the accounts were established, we got started building molecules.  Each student had a list of required molecules to build. I encouraged students to work together as they figured out configurations and ratios. As students completed models they took pictures of the models directly into their portfolio documents. 

After completing the lab, students brought their lab entries to me to review pictures and models. As we noticed that some needed revisions, students asked if they could do something rather than rebuilding with the physical gummy bears toothpicks. This is where the magic really began! I decided to introduce kids to Explain Everything to edit and annotate pictures.  This was the best decision of the entire activity.  I worked with small groups to show them how to work between the apps and insert the corrected photos/diagrams back into their final paper.  What resulted was priceless. Not only did I feel like I could really understand my students' thought processes as we made corrections, but I saw them helping one another to find understanding.  They helped one another learn the new apps and learn the concepts.  What started out as an activity that I thought was predictable and familiar, turned into an experience where I was taken to new experiences in teaching and learning for both my students and me.  

Here are a few suggestions I have to offer when you decide to do adapt a traditional lab to the technology age of science. 

1. When deciding to go digital for a lab book/portfolio, choose a program that works for you.There are so many out there that work well. As with everything else iPad, there are hundreds of ways to answer a question and all are correct!

2. Take the time to walk your students through setting up their accounts and make showing their parents a homework assignment. You will not regret slowing your pace down to make sure everyone is comfortable.

3. Use an activity with which you are very familiar for your first digital assignment. You can anticipate where students will have questions with the concepts to give you more flexibility to address technology issues. 

4. Allow time for mistakes and "do-overs" with the activity you choose.

5. Expect surprises! This is the best part of all.

To learn more ways in which I am using technology in my classroom, follow me on Twitter @eglassman757. 

It's Great to Begin Again!

It is hard to believe that I have not written a blog since May, but as the old adage goes, "time flies!" and yes it has! After having the summer to reflect on my first year of having shared iPads in my classroom, I am very excited to begin again. Now that I have finished week one of the new year with my BioBulldogs, I feel like I am at at good point to reflect on what I did differently to start this school year than last year.

I am now officially in my second year of having iPads in my classroom. I think what surprised my students the most is that we didn't even talk about iPads on day one. My focus was on honor, community, and understanding of the individuals in our classroom. In fact, we didn't even use the iPads on day two. If you are thinking about adding iPads to your classroom, just starting out with iPads this year, or you have experience under your belt with iPads, maybe you can find my take-a-ways of value.

1. Introduce your content, your expectations and yourself before the iPad.  If your school is like mine, the kids want to know you first and the technology second. I am blessed to teach in a community where the relationships between students and teachers trumps all else. The moral fabric of our community rests in honor and trust.

2. Make sure you have clear iPad etiquette expectations so that technology doesn't interfere with learning. In my classroom, all students are assigned a numbered iPad for the year.  When this number is given, students write the number on a log that they will use for all of their username and password information for the year. Students quickly get used to learning phrases like "screens off"  when I need to make sure they are tuned in to what we are doing. Little things such as not changing backgrounds, screen savers and moving apps are important points to make with shared iPads. It may seem very trivial, but you do not want students becoming frustrated because they cannot access their i-text or find the project app.

3. Assume that the first time you introduce iPads to your class that all students have zero experience with them.  This way, you are starting everyone from the same point. They will quickly show each other new features and ways to use the iPad. Even the most experienced users don't know everything. Many students are going from using the iPad for entertainment and consumption to using it for a totally new purpose in school.  Using a simple checklist of skills will give you a quick gauge on ability levels.

4. Allow time for discovery.  I have already noticed a stronger comfort level in my students this year since I have given them two full days of class to explore. The first day they were given specific tasks to do. The second day was devoted to working with the i-text version of our book, Biology by Miller and Levine. My students are using e-texts at home and i-texts in class. I want to give them the opportunity to get used to using the book in different platforms to write their notes. We also explored using one of my favorite apps, Nova Elements. Students can build atoms, much like a game, to show understanding of the periodic table and properties of matter.

Overall, the year has started off smoothly thanks to patient students who have a willingness to keep a solid balance between tradition and technology. Stay tuned for next week when we officially launch our class Twitter account and announce our first term project!

To learn more ways in which I am using technology in my classroom, follow me on Twitter @eglassman757.