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Hello Abigail! My name is Natalie LoBianco, and I am a pre-service teacher at the University of Northern Iowa. I have had wonderful opportunities to explore and create various forms of technology in a number of my courses at UNI that I can incorporate into my teaching. Specifically, in my Teaching Elementary School Science course this semester, we have used iPads almost every class period to gather our thoughts and findings and share them with our teacher and peers. The app we used the most was called Seesaw, and I highly recommend it. In this app, each of my classmates and I created our own Digital Interactive Science Notebooks. In these, we were able to type responses to various questions my professor would ask during her presentations, and submit it directly into the app. If you did not prefer to type on a tablet, you could also upload documents that you typed on your computer, or take a picture of your handwritten notes, and submit it in the app. Our class particularly enjoyed taking pictures and recording videos while we conducted different labs throughout the course.
One lab we conducted was testing various items to see if they sank or floated in water, and determining what characteristic of these items made them sink or float. We documented every step of our experimentation process. We would take pictures of the items beforehand, whether it was regular Coke vs diet Coke, different fruits, different balls, or boats we created. We also took pictures of the items in a tub of water to document whether they were sinking or floating or even recorded videos of how long it took for the item to settle at the top of the water or at the bottom of the tub. Throughout the lab, we would also be recording our predictions, observations, and explanations of what we were observing in the lab, as well as writing our claims, reasoning, and evidence as to why this may be occuring. Our teacher was able to see all of our submissions, and “approve” them if she liked them, so we could also look at our classmates' findings in the app.
Doing all of this truly made us feel like scientists in the field, conducting our experiments, collecting our findings, and sharing them with our fellow scientists. It was engaging and exciting for us, and I guarantee it would have the same effect on our future elementary students, if you want to give it a try! We did not do this during my science class, however, I know that parents can also get connected through Seesaw, giving them the opportunity to see what their child is learning at school. During one of my field experiences, I have also seen Seesaw being used to record student book reports that they sent to their parents via the app.
Similar to what Sydney suggested, I also agree with the idea of using Poll Everywhere in the classroom. We used this in my science course this semester as well, scanning a QR code to the link using our iPad’s i-nigma app. We used this site as a way to share ideas anonymously about new concepts we were talking about, and as a means to ask questions we were too shy to share out loud. Both of these forms of technology can be used in variety of subjects, however, I hope these examples of how we used them in my science class can help you see how the technology and education can be intertwined.
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