Education
on the Internet
Number
41: 23rd October 2002
My Favourite Uses of Websites in Biology and Science Teaching
David Faure
How do websites help students
to learn and the teacher to teach? Drawing on the experience of teaching
Biology and Science in a laptop school this short account will outline
ways of successfully incorporating websites into lessons. There are
five methods that I continually use and they are integrated into lessons
via our department website.
Magic
Moments
These are little flash
animations or animated gifs, which help to illustrate a principal.
They offer a change of activity in the middle of a theory lesson like
a demonstration, but the students can watch the animation as often
as they need to and when they are ready to. Sometimes the results
are more visible than an experiment would be and the graphics far
better than OHP overlays!
Diffusion
animation
HIV
lifecycle
Mouse
Lab Genetic Ratios
IB
Animated lesson on plasma membranes and transport:
Curriculum
Enhancement
There are many websites
which are brilliant for helping students relate to text book examples,
either by giving a young person's perspective on an issue or by describing
a more locally relevant example than the text book. I am convinced
that textbooks will always have a place in education just as we haven't
all abandoned the radio just because we have TV.
The pollution of a lake
in Minimata Japan in 1953 in our text book is linked to the cyanide
pollution of the Rhine in 2000 using already existing web pages via
my teaching website.
Dicing
with Death lesson
Reward
and Revision
To reward able students
who have finished their work there are many good revision quizzes
and competitions. It's possible to create them yourself using "Hot
potatoes" and other shareware tools (LINK). Some students will
take a quiz over and over again until they get all the questions correct,
especially if they can see their position in a league table at the
end.
The
Stroop Test in a nervous system topic
Reeko's
Mad Science Lab
Planet
Science
Display
Pages
A great way to show off
the students' work and to provide examples of good work for the next
year is to build it into web pages. This motivates the students and
they can show their work to parents, and grandparents at any time.
A
Lung Experiment
Hypothesis
Research
Students often struggle
to find specific evidence to support a partly formed hypothesis using
text books. The huge quantity and diversity of websites almost guarantees
the existence of a specific article about any hypothesis. If the student
can just find this example it will turn a good idea into a scientific
hypothesis. Any search engine will work well once the students have
been coached about entering specific words and using speech marks
around key phrases for their search. Warning: students need a very
specific goal and individual guidance at first, if they aren't to
spend hours looking at irrelevant web pages.
For an IB Lungs investigation
to see if gender is related to lung volume, a student entered: "lung
capacity" gender
into http://www.google.com and
found this link on the first page.
http://www.motthall.org/intro/cur/diez/2001-2/diez_website/human/lungs/page10.html
on the first page. It contains some interesting and relevant information
about a similar hypothesis which has already been tested.
Conclusions
If the students are regularly
looking at a department website, it is easy to incorporate a "magic
moment" with a simple hyperlink. The instructions for students
to read pages of the text book go alongside the link to the "curriculum
enhancement". If a student finishes quickly they know where to
find an example of a good piece of work and use it to improve their
own. They can try the "extension quiz", the "revision
questions" or they can simply move to the next piece of work.
For example, look for extension activities in my teaching website.
http://www.intst.net/humanities/dfa_web_sample/01_cells_enzymes/1_cells_main.html
Realistically, computers
do not work well alongside practical experiments in a crowded school
laboratory. A paper note book and a worksheet of instructions are
usually more appropriate when there is a risk of spilling chemicals.
After the experiment has been finished however, the students can us
the computer to copy the method from the teacher's website, paste
it into Word, add their own results and complete the analysis, conclusion
and evaluation with as much guidance as the teacher has written into
the web page.
An example can been seen
on this teaching web page about Enzymes:
http://www.intst.net/humanities/dfa_web_sample/01_cells_enzymes/1_cells_main.html
Students sometimes go to
a "Computer Room" one lesson a month. In this situation
it's possible to use any of the five methods described. Getting a
class of students to type web addresses into a browser can waste a
lot of time, especially if they are working in pairs or don't know
where the letters are on the keyboard. A link to a lesson plan from
the school home page could save half the lesson, and the material
would be available for colleagues to use too.
Using a website rather
than a filing cabinet to store "lesson plans" and "schemes
of work" is an improvement for one reason above all others: I
am not longer territorial about my filing cabinet. In fact I am delighted
if a colleague or student looks into it before lessons, after lessons,
if they are off school ill, or if they have finished their work in
a lesson. The only thing that is different is that they cannot take
the last copy of any page. A word of warning if you look into my teaching
website, just like my old filing cabinet, I never seem to have enough
time to tidy it up properly. Unfortunately my teaching website is
protected by a password at the moment but I have put some samples
on the public server.
http://www.intst.net/humanities/dfa_web_sample/index.htm
http://www.intst.net/humanities/dfa_web_sample/1_induct_/1_induct_main.html
http://www.intst.net/humanities/dfa_web_sample/pollution/pollution_main.html
