June 30 / Interacting with real students

I almost forget to post about our visit to a group of students at the science laboratory this morning. It's been great to talk to real U.S. students and help them with their frog disection. Here are some pictures I've taken.

June 30 / Millenium Park as a sustainable resource to Chicago

"Sustainability is the potential for long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions."

Sustainability can be reached through different tools such as environmental management, management of human consumption of resources and human production of waste, territory planning... In any ecosystem, and that includes urban ecosystems, sustainability must be approached as a whole. Some parts of the city can be considered as unsustainability sources; others can be considered as sustainability sources. This is the case of Millenium Park.

As mentioned in the definition above, sustainability contains three different dimensions: environmental, economic and social. I would like to give some examples to illustrate each for Millenium Park. I haven't chosen concrete physical elements but general aspects of the park.

1. ENVIRONMENTAL DIMENSION

 - Park as a carbon sink for the city: Millenium park is a quite big vegetation patch in the city. As it photosythesizes, vegetation absorbs more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it emits. On the contrary, the rest of the city acts as a very important carbon source, since cars, heatings, air-conditioned systems, etc. are continuously emitting carbon dioxide. So, in this sense, Millenium park can balance carbon emission and absortion in Chicago.

- Park as a habitat island for fauna: whoever went for a 15 minutes walk around Millenium Park would be able to see many different species of birds, mammals, insects and other types of animals. This is important as vast paved surfaces erase big amounts of habitat for fauna. Besides animals, we can also observe a high diversity of plants, including over 900 trees, shrubs, groundcovers, perennials, annuals...

2. ECONOMIC DIMENSION

From the economic point of view, Millenium Park gives Chicago many opportunities to get money inputs: concerts, food stands, festivals, etc. It also provides a relaxation area for those who go working or shopping downtown. 

3. SOCIAL  DIMENSION

People who live in urban areas have many different needs that public services must meet. They need job, they need stores, they need transportation, they need residential areas... but they also need recreation places, green areas, places where they can do sports... In this sense a good urban planning should consider spaces for each different use. That is essential to build a sustainable city.

30 June / Interactive simulations

Today morning we've been having a look at some interactive simulations about different scientific topics in the University of Colorado's website. I've noticed that most of them were related to Physics&Chemistry concepts, while only a few of them were in connection with Biology or Earth Sciences, which I usually teach. However, in the 1st and 2nd levels the subject of Science also includes a basic introduction to some physics and chemistry important concepts, so, I think a lot of them could be useful for me.

If I had to choose only one, I would say the one about building atoms. I would use it after a short theoretical explanation about what an atom is, what its components are, and what the relations are between them. I think this theoretical basis must be superficial because the idea of using the simulation at a computer lab is that they can make up their own conclusions by trying different combinations of protons, neutrons and electrons. I also would give them some questions to answer as they are playing with the simulator, such as: which particles are responsible for the electric charge of the atoms? How do we atoms of different elements? etc.

I think this is a good exercise to my classes, because it's easy to carry out (we only need a computer lab reservation) and because it can be driven in different ways depending on how much you want to go into the topic (for instance, you can also go into electrons distribution in layers).

After the experience, it would be important to discuss students' conclusions in class.

Another simulation I've liked is that one about gravity and orbits, but it's time to have a break now. Bye!

June 29 / Science Labs

Up to the second day at Roosevelt Univ. we have already done several lab experiences and demos. Just let me list them up:

- Soda can demonstration (float or sink?)

- Bess Beetle competition

- Egg Bungee Jump

- Mystery solutions

I must say that all of them are easy to carry out, except that of the beetles, because I don't really know how easy I could find the bugs. The rest of them don't have especial needs, so they would be easy to incorporate in class. But thinking about the interest for pupils, the profit they could get from it, and the motivation potential, I think the best would be the one of the egg bungee jump. Its competition atmosphere is very appealing to young students, and it looks also very useful to explain the transformation between different types of energy. Besides, it can be used to develop some scientific skills such as graphing, predicting, taking data, etc.

I've also liked the last activity about mystery solutions. Not exactly the same experience but its methodology. I think it can be useful not only for chemistry, to go into chemical reactions, but to explore the properties that different substances or materials have themselves: rocks, minerals, liquids... I agree with Pat's appreciation: it is very useful to practise written communication in English.

Later in the afternoon we were walking around Millenium Park to find outdoors resources for our sciences practice lessons. I wanna share one of my ideas with you all.

Parks are not usually seen as ecosystems by students, because they are not natural sites. My objective is to show students that they actually are ecosystems, and therefore, we can distinguish their typical different components: soil, flora, fauna (vertebrates/invertebrates; herbivores/carnivores...), etc. So, my suggestion is to take the students outside to the park, and to draw up a quick inventory of all the elements they can see, classifying them into the different components that an ecosystem have.

It's late, I'm going to bed. Good night!

June 28 / On my own

Milly posed some questions for us to think about... Now I'm sitting at my desk trying to sort out this homework.

What do I want out of my students over the course of a school year?

Regarding to a bilingual science course, I think the objectives for the students would be two:

1. Make them capable to understand natural phenomena related to the topics they study along the course and to give correct explanations about them based on basic theoretical concepts.

2. Preare them to communicate efficiently both in English and in Spanish orally an in writing.

It is equally important to help them feel self-confident at these issues.

Obviously, these general objectives must be delimited for each level, bearing their age and capacities in mind.

What do you think about this?

June 28 / Class Journal

This was my first time creating a blog. I've been interested other times in learning about blogs, and about the possibilities they offer for teaching as well. I've read quite a lot about their possible uses and after this first contact with it, I can guess the few following ideas.

As long as I see it, blogs increase interaction level with students, which is highly desirable to get them involved in their own learning process. They also can hook and motivate them for different reasons:

- as their posts can be read by everyone in the class or even by other people, they feel their work is important and that they are responsible for it, so they try to do their best.

- they can also participate in other students' blogs, making comments, so they feel their opinion is taken into account.

- including new communication and information technologies in the class itself motivates pupils as they face less boring and traditional lessons (in which they used to be too passive), and they're given the opportunity to "play" while learning.

Besides their motivation potential, blogs can be appliable at many subjects, and in many ways, especially reinforcing collaborative learning. We can create a blog to compile scientific news, to provide students with resources about different topics, to upload their homework results, to share information about any interesting issue...

Apart from these first impressions about their utility, I can also share some impressions about my first blog creation experience. I have to say that, although with a bit of help at the beginning, I've found it quite easy to create a blog using blogger.com. Design of templates is also very intuitive, so I've been playing with colours, photographs, backgrounds, etc. I hope you like my blog!