Reflection Journal

Halloween, 2019

I was invited in to watch a lesson by the 6th grade ELA teacher.  The teacher was working with students regarding an essay writing assignment.  The class I observed was missing several students for GATE (Gifted and Talented Education). The remaining class was made of typical middle school students, some quietly engaged, others wiggling in their seats (but still engaged).

The teacher explained about the origins of the word “essay”. She pointed out while students have done biographical writings or other narrative writings, that may have been referred to as essays, they, infact where not. The definition of essay meant something different than it had been used in other classes. 

The word essay comes from the French meaning, “to try” or “to attempt” . She had students brainstorm their ideas for their essay by dividing their paper into fourths. In each quarter, students put a different word which was related to an emotion: wonder, pain, hope, annoyance. The teacher went through her examples with the class. I noticed some students were filling out their papers as she talked. Other students verbally offered different situations related to the words.

Interesting tidbits

A student connected to an idea in social studies class that when there became a surplus, people did not have to work all the time. The student mentioned how this was similar to Michel de Montaigne, a French nobleman who published the first book of essays. He was able to sit, think, and write about anything he felt like because he did not have to work to survive. Thus, allowing him to write and publish.

The left side of the room was called on more than the right. One student waited patiently to be called while others shared their stories related to the words, mainly annoyance.

November 4

Class started with a quote for students to explain, “The road to success is paved with tempting parking spaces” The slide had a visual of different places to park a car. Students were asked to share their “takes” on the statement.  Students had many different interpretations but they could be sorted around two themes: (1) parking spots = spots to quit on your journey, and (2) parking spots = temptations. After many students shared, the teacher distributed a sample essay to students. She explained the essay was an example of mentor text.  After checking with students that they understood the meaning of the mentor text, the teacher went on to explain they were looking for different literary devices as they read. The devices pointed out:

After the first line, the teacher stopped to point out the hook of the text.  The author used alliteration and fast short sentences to symbolize the beating heart of a hummingbird.

Within the first paragraph, the author also used repetition, the power of three, to strengthen points he wished to make. 

During the reading, the teacher allowed students to bring themselves into the learning by taking questions and comments while she read. 

Interesting tidbit

A student commented after hearing about the hummingbird dying young because its heart beats so fast and requires so much energy, that it was similar to being famous.  There is a huge emotional and energy expense to being famous. 

Students started to write after the reading was completed. After they wrote their first paragraph, students stopped and shared their writing.  As a class, they picked the most important word in the first paragraph to use as the direction for the essay. For example, a student wrote about bullying and they mentioned their faith. Students chose faith as the most powerful word in the paragraph which gave the student their next direction to explore.

December 6, 2019

I provided the middle school faculty 60 minutes of follow-up professional development regarding creativity and computational thinking.  The first PD happened in August at the beginning of the school year.  The prior school year, I had provided PD to the faculty about transformational uses of technology in the classroom which also included creativity.  After the PD in August, the teachers were charged with developing and delivering a lesson that uses technology and/or creativity/computational thinking.

For the PD, I provided a quick review of the August PD, then we split into RTI teams to share lessons.  After sharing the lessons, we came back together for each group to highlight their discussion and decide the next steps.  In the 8th-grade RTI group, the ELA teacher shared a lesson using both creativity and technology.  Eighth-grade students read the book, the Giver.  She decided to give the project after reading the book and before students watched the movie.  She did this so students would have made a mental model of the book which served as a comparison as they watched the movie. The project had students creating their own Utopian society. Students are responsible for several criteria such as government, laws, education, and so on. As part of the material students turn in, they had to make a short video, similar to a movie trailer, of their Utopia. 

Another group out of sixth grade was the use of a Google doc to create collaboration between students.  The teachers, who are married, had 6th-grade students during the same class hour. Using a Google Doc, students shared ideas of what to do for the social studies project.  It was an interesting mix of conversation considering some students had social studies and others had not.  

The conversation, though, increased everyone's understanding of the project. Seventh-grade teachers decided to look into electronic portfolios. 

As a group, we decided to make a March deadline for our next lesson.  In the words of one of the teachers, "So we can workshop the lesson like we just did, make improvements, and have time to do better."  Other comments which came out during our final comments included "I really liked the feedback you gave me from the observation." and "I initially did not want to do any of this.  I am not a fan of technology.  But, because of your push, I am finding a lot of ideas that are really helpful for my classroom." 

​I was invited to watch the 8th grade Art Class design and build tetrahedron kites.  The teacher showed the students how to put the structures together using straws and string.  Emphasis was made on the importance of keeping the areas where the straws were tied together, tight.  Students got into the activity without much difficulty.  They assisted each other through the occasional, "Now how I am supposed to do this again?" when things did not look correct.  And reminded each other of the importance of keeping the excess string until the end.  Admittedly, there is not much in the realm of creativity when constructing the kites and the art teacher knew that.  Where she engaged students in creativity was for them to think about a design of tissue paper covering.  

Students had access to a variety of different colored tissue papers which allowed for a bit of creativity when putting the finishing touches on their kite.  Also, the art teacher encourages the students to take the design a step further and figure out how to take their individual kites and put them together into a massive kite (need picture). In terms of creation, students definitely enjoy to create and talk about that a lot in my classroom.  It is a shame we cannot do more as part of a system of education.

​My Human and Computer Interaction class required a research project as part of the class.  I requested to extend my current project for WiPRO,  One of my personal goals is to show the benefit of using microcontrollers such as MicroBits to teach science concepts.  When I mention the word, "science concepts" I am referring to deep thinking and learning, more than some of the claims made be some coding sites where the focus is more on coding and less on conceptual learning of science.  

The following is a bit from my research proposal.  I was able to get an amendment to my original IRB form to collect more data.  It has been interesting working on the research process. I find I enjoy it and a lot of my original thinking is not quite correct.  I am curious to see what happens when I collect data from this as well. 

Problem Statement:

There is thorough research supporting instructional practices that lead to student achievement. The list of strategies is more comprehensive than what is provided in this problem statement.  The focus is on a few strategies directly related to assisting students in developing conceptual understanding. The instructional design emphasizes conceptual thinking with students constructing descriptions of qualitative relationships among variables, to explain observations and solve problems prior to emphasizing quantitative thinking which involves the manipulation of numbers and symbols (Meltzer, 2008; Shaffer & McDermott, 1992). The instructional design which develops conceptual thinking is for the teacher to begin instruction with a physical experience related to the targeted concept/schema (Karplus, 1977; Lawson, Abraham, & Renner 1989; Meltzer, 2008). And as the instructional unit progresses, students engage in experiences to collect data, make predictions, and carry out tests of their own design to figure things out with the assistance of the teacher (Brooks & Brooks, 1993; Meltzer, 2008; Southerland et al.,2005).

Computational thinking, on the other hand, is a newer term first introduced in 2006 by Jeanette Wing. There are four pillars to computational thinking: decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction, and development of algorithms. Concerning the necessity of computational thinking (CT) skill, in today’s work of any discipline, understanding the capacity (advantages and limitations) of computation and the existing computerized systems in that area is crucial to innovating in that field (Furber, 2012). Previous studies have found programming instruction improves CT skills and demonstrated it should be integrated into education

Physical computing, specifically microcontrollers such as MicroBits provide a different environment for students to work with scientific concepts as well as work on computational thinking skills. A gap exists in the research literature regarding the integration of computational thinking into a science curriculum and what role microcontrollers play in student conceptual learning.

Research Questions or Hypothesis 

RQ1: How do students respond to two computer-based learning activities designed to teach electrical circuits? 

How do students rank the usability of a PhET simulation regarding electrical circuits compared to the usability of microcontrollers and light bulbs? 

What is the impact on students’ conceptual understanding of circuits? 

What is the impact on student problem solving and computational thinking skills? 

Proposed methodology:

106 eighth grade students will be working on the project as part of their regular class instruction.  Parents will sign a permission form which allows me to use the data collected for the study. Students have completed one semester of 10 lessons of instruction regarding programming Micro:Bits.  There are 59 males and 47 females.  

For the first day of the electricity unit, all students take the electrical concept test.  The test will be administered via Google forms.  The advantage of using Google forms is the data is automatically placed in a sheet for analysis and some descriptive statistics are provided. All students will complete the associated activities for developing a conceptual understanding of static and current electricity. The activities throughout the unit are designed to provide physical experiences designed to develop student qualitative understanding of electricity prior to eliciting quantitative relationships. Prior to working with series and parallel circuits, students will take the self-efficacy test for computational thinking and problem-solving.  At which point three classes of students will use the Micro:Bit to complete learning activities related to series and parallel circuits while two classes will complete learning activities designed to teach the same concepts but use the PhET circuits simulation. In the end, all students will take a Computer Usability Satisfaction Questionnaire (CUSQ) regarding their system.  Then, students switch and do the same activities the students did use the Micro:Bit or PhET did previously as well as take the CUSQ for their new system once the activities are completed. As a final assessment, all students take the self-efficacy test and final conceptual test on electricity.

Even with the COVID-19 pandemic related shutdown of our school, I was able to squeeze in the unit. Admittedly, the students had to take the post-test at home and instruction was hurried, but I did collect data that demonstrates a change. I will be spending time analyzing the data in April and writing up the final drafts for publication while teaching online from home.

Timeline

2nd week of March – Electricity Unit  

• (Pre-assess) Self-efficacy test and conceptual understanding test– all students 

• Explain the difference between static and current electricity.

• Recognize the basic properties of electric charge.

• Describe technologies associated with static electricity.

• Explain the transfer of electrons between two objects.

• Compare different objects based on their electric charge.

• Understand that the electrical properties of a material determine how it can be used in an electrical circuit

• Predict whether an object is likely to conduct electricity.

• Distinguish between electrical conductors and insulators.

3rd week of March – Electricity Unit  

• Describe, represent with symbols, and compare the differences between series and parallel circuits using PhET simulation and Micro:Bit controller

•  ½ students do an activity with setting up a series and parallel circuit with a microcontroller to code control of light, ½ students do PhET simulation on series and parallel circuits (Computer Usability Satisfaction Questionnaire) - all students 

• Describe the connections among representations of circuit symbols.

• Find the voltage of batteries connected in series by summing the individual batteries' voltages.

• Explain the relationship between current, voltage and resistance.

• Distinguish between series and parallel parts of a circuit.

• Describe how current changes in a parallel circuit when a light bulb is removed from or added to the circuit.

• Describe the connections among representations of circuit symbols

• Describe how current changes in a series circuit when a light bulb or battery is added or removed from the circuit

• Student groups switch to other activity (repeat - Computer Usability Satisfaction Questionnaire) (Post-assess) Self-efficacy test and conceptual understanding test – all students 

Limitations

The research method is quasi-experimental because students are required to do the work as part of their education and groups are made out of convenience and not random. Further, while classroom observations would add depth to explaining the results, it is difficult to capture the moments in the classroom with the researcher also being the teacher and video also cannot capture all students at all times. 

After collecting data, I spent the month analyzing the data.  I wrote this research paper for publication.  It is a rough draft of the paper. This paper has been a great extension of my first idea.  The application of physical computing into learning science concepts is a potentially fruitful method for better student learning. 

I will be writing up my other research regarding using my first set of data too.  The relationship between these two projects need further study (next year, if we are not on lock down)

When the school year started, I was excited to implement my ideas in the classroom. I had taken classes and worked through curriculum options related to teaching students coding.  I was worried about the weekly interruption to my lesson flow for teaching science.  I was concerned that students would not like learning about coding or computers.  I was also concerned regarding balancing full-time doctoral studies, a full-time grade research assistantship (20 hr per week), and teaching full time while completing this project. 

As we worked through the initial lessons using the Micro:bits, it was fun to be in the classroom.  Students who worked with me picked up on what to do with coding and were more successful with the projects.  Extra Micro:bits were checked out of the library as students worked on projects at home too.  I used the data from the project as part of a larger project I developed because of one of my doctoral classes. In the project, I looked at how the interaction between the student and Micro:bit impacts student learning; in this case, simple electrical circuits.

I currently have one of the papers written and will be writing one more.  My growth this school year was in the direction of researching the area of science education. Having the idea for doing the project is because of WiPRO. The project expanded into actionable research because of grad school.  

This school year was my second as a lead middle school technology teacher.  In that role, I set the groundwork for teachers to increase their work integrating technology in their respective classrooms.  It was easy to provide professional development to them regarding computational thinking.  It built on our previous work with creativity. With the school shut down, I was especially busy helping teachers make the transition to teaching online. Pending how our infection rate goes, I will offer to assist teachers again in the fall with best practices in teaching online.

My growth through this process would fall into the category as an educational researcher. I am more confident in my ability to design a research study for my classroom.  Further, I have built confidence in being a contributor to the research community. I look forward to continuing this work next school year after spending time improving my instructional materials. 

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