The students’ first reaction were “What do you mean, for fun?  What will we have to hand in at the end?”  This made me laugh, and it didn’t take long to get the message across about what I mean by ‘for fun’.

I then noticed something surprising happen.  The students were entirely engaged in doing this experiment!  I’ve never seen them so focused and interested in a lab before.  I also noticed something that _didn’t_ happen that I usually see: they weren’t fussing over the littlest details, hoping they were doing everything perfectly right so that they get the ‘correct’ result from the experiment.  They weren’t asking me at every step questions like “Is this the right amount of chemical? Is this what I’m supposed to observe?  Do I mix the chemicals this way?”

We truly had a lot of fun.  And I’m totally convinced the students ‘learned’ a lot more from this ‘fun’ experiment than I was expecting.

The librarian can then scan this instead of my library card.  I thought that was pretty neat.

Further examination of the app revealed that I can add bar code images for many more of my membership and loyalty cards that I normally carry around with me everyday in my wallet, such as Airmiles, Best Buy Reward zone, and many more.  Thanks to another digital innovation, my wallet is now lighter and smaller than it was (and I didn’t have to take any money out of it to do so!!).  Check it out!

A few months ago, I felt ready to come back to twitter and this blog, but I hesitated, particularly with my twitter account.  I felt that I had missed so much from the people who I follow (mostly other educators who do a fantastic job at sharing about what they do) that I feared an ‘uphill battle’ at getting re-integrated into the ‘twitter stream’.  I also felt a bit ‘sheepish’, as if I were a member of the group who had left, then tried to ‘sneak’ back into the conversation.

Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong.  I wasn’t reading my timeline for more than about 15 minutes before I was already saving new bookmarks to my delicious account, retweeting some of the people who I follow and getting some inspiration for a couple of new posts to this blog.  It was so much easier to ‘jump back in’ than I had feared it was.  Even coming back to this blog was less onerous than I feared.

I also had another ‘aha’ moment…I don’t have to feel guilty if I can’t follow my twitter feed some days for fear of missing something.  The people who I follow, whom I call my online PLN (professional learning network) are so good at sharing what they do that there is more than enough material they provide on a day-to-day basis that I will ALWAYS have fantastic things to read about.

Now, I just have to find good ways of sharing things myself.

Earlier this school year, I had an interesting experience in my classroom that changed how I borrow and read material from my library.  In my grade 12 chemistry class, we were going through the introduction to quantum mechanics section of the atomic structure unit.  I like to add information from one of my favourite science authors, Brian Greene.  He is a theoretical physicist who has a knack of explaining some of the more esoteric topics of quantum mechanics and string theory in a way that makes it accessible to us non theoretical physicists.  He has also helped create NOVA science episodes based on his first two books, ‘Elegant Universe‘ and ‘Fabric of the Cosmos‘. I enjoyed his first two books so much that I bought them (a rare occurence for me).

While scanning his website, I noticed that he recently published a new book, ‘Hidden Reality’.  I couldn’t wait to get a hold of that book.  As my students were working hard on problem questions at the time, I took out my trusty iPod touch and searched my local public library’s mobile website for the book.  I didn’t know that, by default, this site returned results for only their ‘digital’ library.  My library had an e-book version of Brian’s new book.  In about 4 clicks and less than 30 seconds, I had an electronic copy of the book on my iPod ready to read (I had it fully read in a week!).

Since then, I do almost all of my reading for pleasure digitally through my iPod touch (it also helps me get my money’s worth out of my new bifocals!!).

What did the Gingerbread Man put on his bed?
A cookie sheet!

How did Scrooge win the football game?
The ghost of Christmas passed.

What did Adam say the day before Christmas?
It’s Christmas, Eve!

What is the difference between the Christmas alphabet and the regular alphabet?
The Christmas alphabet has no L.

What is green, covered with tinsel and says, “Ribbit, ribbit?”
A mistle-toad.

What do monkeys sing at Christmas time?
Jungle Bells, Jungle bells.

What do Christmas trees and bad knitters have in common?
They both drop their needles.

What would you get if you ate the Christmas decorations?
Tinselitis.

What do you call people who are afraid of Santa Claus?
Claustrophobic.

Why did they ask the turkey to join the band?
He had the drum sticks.

What did the salt say to the pepper?
Season’s Greetings.

What did the bald man say when he got a comb for Christmas?
Thanks, I’ll never part with it!

Why wasn’t the turkey hungry at Christmas time?
Because he was stuffed.

If athletes get athletes foot, what do astronauts get?
Missle toe!

What do you get when you cross a Christmas tree with an Macintosh?
A pineapple.

How do sheep in Spain say Merry Christmas?
Fleece Navidad!

What do you call a letter that is sent up the chimney on Christmas eve?
Blackmail.

What is a parent’s favorite Christmas carol?
Silent Night.

What song do Santa’s reindeer sing on his birthday?
Freeze a Jolly Good Fellow.

You better get spruced up if you’re going to sell Christmas trees.

What language does Santa Claus speak?
North Polish.

Where does Santa Claus go swimming?
The North Pool.

What kind of motorcycle would Santa ride?
A Holly Davidson

What is Santa Claus’ favorite cereal?
Frosted Flakes.

How do Santa and Mrs. Claus travel?
On an icicle built for two.

Some children call him Santa Caus since there is Noel.

Why will Santa go down your chimney on Christmas Eve?
Because it soots him.

If Santa and Mrs. Claus had a baby, what would he be?
A subordinate Claus.

Why does Santa have three gardens?
So he can ho, ho, ho.

When Santa has a barn dance, what does he call it?
A Ho Ho Ho Down.

What do you call an ELF who sings?
A Wrapper!

What is a typical elf greeting?
“Small world, isn’t it?”

What do elves have to learn before they can read?
The elfabet.

If Santa rides in a sleigh, what do elves ride in?
Mini vans.

How long are an elf’s legs?
Long enough to reach the ground.

Who makes toy guitars and sings, “Blue Christmas?”
Elfis.

What did the reindeer say before beginning his comedy routine? This will sleigh you.

“Why don’t we ever hear about ‘Olive,’ the 10th reindeer?” asked Bert.
“What 10th Reindeer?” asked Scott.
“You know. Olive, the other reindeer, used to laugh and call him names.”

What does a reindeer do when he has an upset stomach?
He takes an elk-a-seltzer.

Which reindeer was known for his bad manners?
Rude-olph.

What do you call a reindeer who wears ear muffs?
Anything you want. He can’t hear you.

If a reindeer lost its tail, where could he get a new one?
At a retail store.

Why does Scrooge love reindeer?
Because every buck is deer to him.

I was curious as to how the students might have been using their QR code readers outside of the classroom (most of them had been introduced to QR codes by me).  I made a quick poll using Zoho Polls, asking them the following question:

I have them a few days to answer.  I have a total of 145 Grade 12 chemistry students.  Here are the results of the poll:

(You can see how ZohoPolls provides the poll results on their website here.)

I was a bit surprised.  I thought that the students would be using their QR code readers more often outside the classroom.  They seemed much more enthusiastic about using it in the class than the results of the poll seem to suggest.  Perhaps they aren’t finding good opportunities to use them outside of my class.  Hmm, sounds like a good opportunity to offer some after school PD to teachers at my school who might want to learn more about QR codes and how to use them in their classes.

Some of the concepts are quite detailed, and I find (I know, perhaps antiquated, but it’s me) a somewhat traditional ‘lecture’ style lesson, along with lots of examples, helps to get the point across.  I also write down ‘notes’ on the board that I suggest students copy or paraphrase into their notebooks. However, my classes are only 38 minutes long each day (full year class, not semestered, I see them every day, not every other day).  A lesson can eat up most of that time, leaving little time for examples.  Examples are often pushed to the next day.

What I’m trying different is to post ‘formal notes’ about the lesson to our course webpage (look at the ‘Handout’ section) prior to the lesson (sometimes the morning of, sometimes the day before).  These note are usually a lot more ‘wordy’ and ‘verbose’ than what I would usually write on the board in class.  I encourage students to not simply copy them (or worse, just print them and place them in their notebooks for later reference) but to read and paraphrase them into their own words.  This gives me much more time in class to do lots of examples, as well as provide them in-class practice and be a ‘circulating resource’ while they work on the practice questions.

Many students (not all, which is why I don’t use this technique for all lessons) have told me they like this approach.   Most of them state it helps to minimize the amount of homework they have to do at home, as some of it they complete in class (while I’m there to serve as a resource for them while they work).

I plan on polling the students later in the year to see what they really think of this approach and ask for suggestions on how I can improve it.

A little bit of history: Our board has recently lifted its ban on the use of web-enabled devices in the school.  It has left it up to individual teachers whether they will allow the use of such devices in the classroom.  Our students aren’t used to using them in the classroom, so I went looking for ways of making it ‘interesting’ for them to do so.

I then read this post, which highlights different ways of using QR codes in the classroom.  I encourage you to read it, there are some awesome ideas there.

I decided to encourage the use of web-enabled devices through the use of QR codes in two ways:

1) I use QR codes on assignment handouts that point to the answer keys for those assignments on the course website I maintain for my grade 12 chemistry classes.  I normally make a hard copy of the answer key available at the front of the room while students have class time to work on assignments.  Including the QR code allows them to pull up the answer key on their web-enabled device right at their seat.

2) I like silly puns.  I post a new one outside my door everyday.  I now also post a ‘bonus pun‘ in the form of a QR code.  As silly as it may seem, many students have told me that ‘wanting to know what the bonus pun was’ turned out to be the reason they learned how to scan a QR code with their device in the first place.

I’d love to hear how you use, or plan to use, QR codes in your classes or lessons.

I often do something a little different when I search an educational topic.  I  use Delicious.  Let me explain why.

You may have noticed that I have a list of links on the left hand side of my blog entitled “Some of my online bookmarks at Delicious”.  Delicious is an online social bookmarking service.  It allows you to save your bookmarks (or favorites) online.  You can organize them using tags and categories.  Your bookmarks are now available to you on any internet-connected computer.  If you use a browser like Firefox, you can add a Delicious app that integrates the adding and searching of bookmarks in your delicious account.

OK.  So what does this have to do with topic searching?  That comes from the ‘social’ part of this service.  Not only can you search your own bookmarks, but the bookmarks of everyone that uses the Delicious service.

OK.  So why is that useful?  Let me show you with an image, and then explain.  I’ve just done a search at Delicious for “inquiry science labs lesson plans”.  The results at Delicious look like this:

The numbers in the blue boxes are what makes this kind of search useful for me.  They indicate how many people at delicious have bookmarked these sites.  By search Delicious instead of a regular search engine, not only do I find websites that match my search, but I find websites that many other people have already found and decided they were worth bookmarking.  That means I am finding sites that have been ‘vetted’ by many other people.  There’s a good chance that my search for an educational topic finds websites that have been bookmarked by many other teachers.

What better way to find good educational topic websites than to search those already found by other teachers!  Try it sometime!

(Science Teachers Association of Ontario Annual Conference)

This post summarizes my experiences on the third day of this conference.

My first session was another Smarter Science demonstration of senior chemistry. This session was hosted by  Katy Farrow and was entitled “Introduction to the Smarter Science Inquiry Framework – Grades 11-12 Chemistry“.  Its description was “Learn how chemistry teachers in the TVDSB are addressing the scientific inquiry and investigation expectations in the revised SCH3U, SCH4C, and SCH4U courses. Course-specific experiences and strategies will be shared.”  As before, I left the session still scratching my head a little bit about what the framework of “Smarter Science” is supposed to be and how to use it to make labs more inquiry based and student driven.  However, this session was better than the one I had attended yesterday in that some more ‘see what it looks like’ activities were done to help make this process a little more understandable.  I think I’m going to need some serious time to look more carefully into the information on the website and contact some teachers that are more comfortable with this framework to make more sense of it and how I may apply it to the courses that I teach.

One extra piece of information I did received from the presenter is that next year, 2011, is the international year of chemistry.  A quick look at the website reveals there are a lot of resources available.  I think I’ve got part of my summer reading time already ‘booked’!

The second session I attended was for pure enjoyment.  It was a lecture style talk by Jay Ingram, host of the Canadian science  show Daily Planet. Its description was “Daily Planet has introduced us to innovative people, technologies and inventions, the extravagance of nature and the incomprehensibility of the universe. Jay Ingram seamlessly connects the dots among diverse ideas and structures.”

He started his lecture with a description of what drives his show.  Since it is owned by CTV, their main purpose is to produce shows that make money. The fact that a show that includes science as part of its content remains on the air after 15 seasons is a real accomplishment.  Jay was careful to point out that his show is not purely science content, as such a show would not survive on a private broadcaster’s schedule.  That being said, there is science embedded in each and every story on the show.  He was a dynamic speaker, fun to listen to and made this particular hour the fastest of my day.

The last session I attended was hosted by the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics called “Perimeter Explorations Resource – The Mystery of Dark Matter” .  Its description was “Over the last few decades, physicists have come to realize that about 90% of the mass of every galaxy in the universe seems to be made of a mysterious unseen substance called dark matter. This presentation provides an overview of the Perimeter Institute’s educational resource on Dark Matter for grade 12. Presented with Dave Fish who partnered in the development of this session.”

Although I teach chemistry, topics related to Astronomy (Dark Matter is an Astronomy topic) and Quantum Mechanics have always interested me, the former as something of a pastime, the later because of its pure craziness.  Also I thought to be able to bring some resources back for the physics teachers in our department.

The presentation was very well done.  They included a free resource package for teachers that includes a 25 minute video that is chunked into short 3-5 minute chapters.  Also included is a teacher’s manual that includes about 5 activities that can be done for students.  In particular, they concentrate on a topic in grade 12 physics called uniform circular motion with a very easy and well thought-out hands-on activity for the students.  The manual also has background information for teachers that may not know that much about the underlying physics of the activities (like me!), as well as sample answers to the students worksheets that are also included in the package.  I found that this hour went by very quickly as the presentation was very interesting, engaging and easy to follow.

I already know that the physics teachers in our department will like this resource package.

At those were my experiences at STAO2010.  All in all, a VERY worthwhile experience for me.