Friday, July 15, 2011
Ask A Scientist
The Ask a Scientist website opened a lot of opportunities to myself and my students to actively engage with others in the scientific community. It gave the opportunity to bounce questions off of other scientists that were directly related to what we were currently researching. One down side to the website is it seems like the responses to our questions were not in a timely fashion or received at all. This can be a huge setback toward its use in a classroom. The unpredictability of the website doesn't lend itself to effective unit planning. I did a little research on my own for the question I asked so I gained some insight on that front, but the website did not provide any feedback to help me answer my question. Students not receiving an answer to their question can be detrimental and cause them to become frustrated with the material. The website has a lot of potential for classroom use but it need to resolve some of its inconsistency before I would commit to using it in my classroom.
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Just to let you know, when I took that class I did finally get an answer to my question, but it was like a month later. It would be nice if they responded more quickly so we could integrate it into our curriculum.
ReplyDelete-Julie
The website would be great if there was more interaction between the scientists and the students. I am lucky to have an Environmental Scientist who comes in my classroom and teaches once a month, the students do enjoy talking to someone who actually uses science for their job. I get spoiled with my Science Olympiad team because of the interaction my SO students have with scientists in our area. It can be so difficult to find a speaker to come in when we are working on specific subect. There are not too many Paleontologists or Seismologists in our area. Podcasts and video chats help, but you have to have access to the technology for that to happen, and then only one of my hours would have the opportunity because of time limitations. The use of this type of websites would be great so the students could see how the information that we are learning is useful in the "real" world.
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