Sunday, April 19, 2015

Augmented Reality in the Science Classroom

This weekend I made a presentation about Augmented Reality in the science classroom.  Everyone seemed to really be excited about using these apps in their classroom.  I've posted my presentation below that you can benefit from it as well!  Most of these apps are available for both Android and Apple.

For those of you who aren't familiar with augmented reality, it's a way to superimpose a computer generated image onto a real world experience.  I know this doesn't explain it very well, so I suggest you download one of the apps and try it out.  Here is a quick video demonstrating one of my favorite apps Anatomy 4D.





This post also appears on my other blog The Tech Savvy Science Teacher.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Reading to Learn in Science

Reading to Learn in ScienceA free course from Stanford University Graduate School of Education

Why do so many students struggle to read and comprehend scientific texts? Most science teachers have witnessed it at least once: a student reads from a textbook or article, proceeding calmly and clearly from sentence to sentence, only to reach the period at the end of the paragraph with little comprehension of what he or she has just read. Even children who learn to read quickly—who begin to devour books or blogs, novels or news stories—often seem to struggle with scientific prose. As a teacher, these struggles raise important questions: Which texts should my students read? What should I do if they struggle to understand? Am I teaching a text too quickly? Too slowly? Will more reading become an uphill battle? Will less reading become a slippery slope on which reading becomes even more difficult? This course is designed to address such concerns, giving teachers the tools to help students read for understanding in science.