Bright ideas for teaching science

Wordle is a free online word cloud maker. Using Wordle, you can create a visual cloud of the words from any piece of text you input, including entire URLs.

One example of a wordle cloud would be this one below

To use this in a classroom, you could apply it to a series of words that pupils have used in their write-ups or descriptions and output a Wordle as a way to analyse the content.

Alternatively you can apply it to a class blog to analyse which subjects still remain to be covered by the class.

Just a few really quick ideas for using digital photo frames in the science classroom.

The beauty of digital photo frames is that you create a dynamic that you can’t achieve with a computer screen, while having access to a large number images that can be much fresher than their paper equivalent. Also you can control what is viewed by the students by remote control.

Here are some ideas I came up with.

• Collages made by putting together a number of frames. How about taking all the students photos on SD and putting them together to make an electronic collage of frames. Then you can either put all frames on slideshow or you can hit the remote control to change them. Pupils can then compare a shole set of photos, perhaps comparing visual impact, photo style or content.
• How about a digital photostorybook. This idea was inspired by the flickr 5 photo story group. Pupils take 5 pictures that, when looked at in sequence tell a story. With the photo frames, pupils can take a series of photos in a group and set them up to go forward in a certain order. They can then pass their photo frames to the next group to guess what the story is meant to mean. Or they can edit their entire photo story to include captions which can then be passed on to be read

Aim: To investigate the issues affecting food distribution and production around the world
Time: A double lesson in a computer room
Objectives:

1. To show awareness of the huge differences in availability of food around the world
2. To discuss potential solutions
3. To consider the impact of our actions at home and abroad

Materials: Photos or projector, online forum (e.g. moodle or edublogs built-in forums), online voting/choice tool or voting tool with your interactive whiteboard
Procedure:

Starter

Beginning with this image by James Nacthwey, of a famine victim in Sudan in 1993 projected on the board and a Kit Kat in your hand just casually talk about what you ate last night. The less you say about the famine victim the more the contrast will be clear and pupils will start to feel very uneasy.

After a few minutes of talking about last nights midnight feast, turn around and just happen to notice that there’s a famine victim on the board.

Pupils should be chomping at the bit to try to rectify all the wrong in the world, so get them to brainstorm in groups possible ways that we can sort this out. For most of the brainstorming session, it is most likely they will talk about just what a heartless bastard you are, but that’s part of the point. Emotional engagement with the topic is good!

Review the ideas and start to point out that all contributions do actually involve some cost element.

You could perhaps add “Give us a fiver then and I’ll send it over.” and then you can then ask if they can guess at the scale of the problem. 1p for each of the victims perhaps? Let’s see who’s going to pay…

(Just to add to the guilt why not give them a doughnut as a prize for good answers and see how many people accept – hypocrisy is always a good thing!)

Main Part 1 – Manifesto

The task is for the pupils to put themselves in the position of a Prime Minister, who has decided to tackle world poverty. So to do this they will have to look up the viability of the projects that they have proposed on the web, see if these projects have been done before and find out the success rates and other facts about them.

They will then write a manifesto to announce their proposal to the world, saying what they intend to do and how much it will cost the taxpayers.

This manifesto/proposal they write directly onto the forum for all to view.

Main Part 2 – Feedback and questioning of candidates

The pupils then comment on the validity of the proposals put forward. For this they may need to research the sources put forward by the candidate.

Main part 3 – Forming political parties

Pupils then form into groups depending on the types of policies that they have decided to implement and they post their Political Party name in the forum. They may at this point wish to write a joint manifesto based on the feedback each candidate has received putting forward a united front

Main part 4 – The voting

Pupils to vote for a single candidate. No voting allowed for your own party of course! If you are using a VLE like moodle you may wish to unhide the voting/choice option at this point. Youcan alsouse your interactive whiteboard voting devices now if you have them.
Count up votes, discuss vote rigging and give doughnuts to the winners!

Variants

I have also done this with Recycling, (Edexcel Unit C1b.7 – There’s only one Earth) where the pupils choose to recycle ANYTHING at all, and they research the success of this project as trialled in other countries as their research

Aim: Recall of words by repetition
Time: 10 Minutes
Materials: Whiteboard
Procedure: On the board write down the vocabulary that you want the pupils to learn. Keep the list to around 10 words and distribute the words around the board randomly. Point at a word and ask the pupils to say it out loud. Point to another word and the pupils say it. Go over all the words. Then rub one out. Point at the gap and ask the pupils what was there. Point to some other words, then rub another out until the board is blank and the pupils are chanting the words to blank spaces.