Standard 2: Students will understand that organisms depend on living and nonliving things within their environment
Objective 2: Describe the interactions between living and nonliving things in a small environment
Thinking back on some of the most influential teachers from your childhood, it is easy to picture the one that was most loving, the one with the funniest necklaces, or the one that had the most exciting lessons. Those individuals truly made time in the classroom fun and prepared us for our upcoming years of schooling. As the years have changed the world in which we live, the definition of influential teachers has also been changed. It is becoming increasingly important that teachers become "tech savvy" in order to prepare students for what comes next in their educations. How might a teacher be "tech savvy", you ask. Simple. By incorporating technology into the classroom to better present material to a class, a teacher is becoming tech savvy. By teaching students to use technology effectively, a teacher is becoming tech savvy. By allowing students to use technology to learn about the content, a teacher is becoming tech savvy. In the future, those teachers who were able to stand worthy of the description "tech savvy" will truly be the ones remembered for their exciting lessons, unforgettable class experiences, and skills to be used throughout life.
In order to be more worthy of the title "tech savvy", I thought long and hard as to how I might help my own third grade students learn through technology. As we began our unit on pond life and exploring organisms' dependence on living and nonliving things, I Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0 und just the thing. We began our unit by collecting jars for every member of the class. We took a short field trip to a local pond where all of the students were instructed to fill their jars with pond water, including the ground, water, plants, etc. Once we got back to the class, we spent time observing what we had collected. Students came up with lists on what they saw in their jars. At this point, I explained that within our jars were organisms that depended on both the living and nonliving things surrounding them. Each student was then assigned a partner and together used the classroom laptops to visit the website http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/index.html. This link brought students to Virtual Pond Dip, where students explored the various organisms within a jar of pond water. The website gave students thorough details on water was in their jar and how these inhabitants interacted with their surroundings. After adequate time exploring Virtual Pond Dip, students gathered back together as a class to share what they had found and spend more time observing their societies in a jar.
While I could have provided information for my students about what was actually in their jar of pond water, how much more effective it was for students to choose for themselves what to search for and learn about. Students had the opportunity to act as researchers, choosing what to look into and explore further about. Students observed their jars initially and assumed they had found everything they could. Through the use of Virtual Pond Dip, students were able to acknowledge what they missed and gather information to share with the class. Additional skills gained through the lesson include the idea that what one sees is not always the whole picture, working with others in order to solve problems, navigating around a website, and presenting material to a group. How wonderful it is that through simply allowing access to a computer and directing students to a website can provide so much valuable information and so many valuable skills.
Students will log on to computers in groups and navigate to the site Virtual Pond Dip. Here students will be able to view a drawing of a jar of pond water where organisms have been magnified. They will click on the various organisms to learn more about what they collected in their own jars.
When looking at the different organisms, students will view enlarged pictures of the organism along with information about size, where they can be found, and what their scientific classifications are.
When learning about the different organisms students will be able to read general information about each one, including specifics descriptions of physical appearance and where they might place themselves within a jar.
If students find a few organisms particularly interesting, they can click on links on the page in order to gather more in-depth information about them as well as see actual images gathered through the use of a microscope.
Once students have completed a thorough search of the different organisms in their jar, they can navigate to the Pond Life Identification Kit to find out key features of each one when observing their own jar once more.
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