This week, I'd like to:
- share some curriculum materials I've been trialling with my Year 9 Earth Science classes
- reflect on a problem and discussion we encountered
- connect this discussion to some educational theory
In Year 9 we're studying the theory of plate tectonics and natural disasters. This is the first time we've approached the topic seriously. In previous years the National Curriculum was just beginning to be implemented and it was unclear whether we should focus on rocks and minerals and/or plate tectonics. With a better understanding of the National Curriculum as well as completing 2 MOOCs, researching the state of Earth Science education and perusing several textbooks and other resources, I think we've begun to teach Earth Science much more effectively and in a more engaging way that inspires curiosity!
One of the resources, a colleague and I have been exploring is the Cyber Enabled Earth Exploration Curriculum, CE3:
This curriculum scaffolds students through some of the powerful features of Google Earth while encouraging them to make observations. Students draw conclusions about the structure of the Earth based on the skill of observation highly valued in Geology.
In our school, Year 9 students are expected to bring a device to class. It could be any brand of tablet or lap top computer. Needless to say, this sometimes makes teaching the content difficult. Some brands work differently than others and time is spent trouble shooting the technology. On the other hand, I think this can be a powerful learning opportunity for students' problem solving skills.
Problem: Students were supposed to click on a radio button to view an animation, but the animation was missing! This happens as newer versions of Google Earth are made available.
The only problem is that the students said that it still didn't work!
Here's what came up in get info:
<iframe
src="http://ge.spatialsci.com/html/ID/3380d6c1"width="700"
height="500" style="border: 0px solid blue;"></iframe>
With a little prompting, it turned out that students were copying and pasting all the code and putting it into the browser. I sat with a student and explained that this is computer code, to which she excitedly said: 'Hey, Lynne knows about that! Look Lynne, code!' We discussed what 'src,' 'width' and 'height' were referring to and how to extract the website from the code. Another student who initially had little interest in solving the problem and opted to find the information on Wikipedia, turned to us and said: 'Yeah, just don't include the quotes!'
Alexander (in Exploring Talk in Schools edited by Mercer and Hodgkinson, 2008) writes about 3 versions of human relations when exploring the relationship between culture, dialogue and learning (p. 96):
- Individualism: the self is placed above others and personal rights come before collective responsibilities, characterised by unconstrained freedom of thought and action.
- Community: human interdependence, caring for others, sharing and collaborating is emphasised
- Collectivism: also emphasises human interdependence but to serve the needs of society or the state as a whole
When reading these descriptions of human relations, they sounded familiar to Bakhtin's three-part model of the self: I-for-myself, I-for-others and others-for-me. Individualism reminded me of I-for-myself whereas I-for-others and others-for-me reminded me of the community and collectivism human relations.
What intrigued me about this classroom exchange, was the student who initially gave up on solving the problem as suggested - by using the get info tool - and opted to search using Wikipedia. Lisbeth didn't share this information with her peers and I suspect that Wikipedia wouldn't have provided the answers she sought. Through enacting individualism she was agentive in her learning and exhibited the I-for-myself identity.
In my classroom I'm a believer in the constructivist approach and much of our explorations surround developing what Alexander would call community human relations, yet at which point do students' I-for-myself identities shift* to I-for-others or others-for-me? Before delving into sharing her solution using Wikipedia, was Lisbeth experimenting to see if it would meet the needs of her peers? At which point did she decide to abandon it and become part of the community deconstructing code? The answers to these questions were lost in this lesson, but provide interesting things to watch out for in future exchanges.
To conclude, I want to return to the students in the class. Their willingness to solve these minor technical issues in whichever ways they thought appropriate - Some students only asked the people sitting next to them and when advised to venture further afield to the other side of the classroom, showed surprise that others may possess different solutions! - and the atmosphere of empowerment in the classroom illustrated something more tacit. Their determination indicated a curiosity in the content. Solving these technical issues allowed them to get back to the interesting tasks at hand illustrating that Earth Science is more than 'boring old rocks!'**
* I've avoided using terms like evolve as there exists the assumption that change is for the better. Our identities don't remain static and identity shifts can have positive and negative effects for us and others around us.
** Not my thoughts although I've heard this in a number of exchanges with teachers and students!
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