CSTA Collaborative Networking and Open Resources for Teaching Investigative Science
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Contents
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Overview
October 30, 2008 Workshop Presentation at the California Science Education Conference in San Jose, California
Collaborative Networking and Open Resources for Teaching Investigative Science
In a hands-on session, learn how to use, modify, and create open educational resources in an international context to teach contemporary issues, such as climate change, in investigative science.
Workshop Description
How can teachers find and adapt free, open and useful educational resources that address contemporary issues in investigative science? In an interactive, hands-on session, participants will work explore Open Educational Resources (OER), which are teaching and learning materials that are free to use and reuse for educational purposes. Using www.oercommons.org, numerous science resource web sites, and web-based collaboration tools, such as wikis and online portfolios, we will demonstrate and provide handouts on collaborative technologies to enhance communication and learning through processes of identifying and modifying relevant resources. We will share results of an international pilot project on climate change investigation to help participants experience how they can collaborate to use, modify and create open resources, in the context of teaching contemporary issues in science.
California Content Standards
6th Grade: 4a, 4d, 5e, 6a, 6b, 7a, 7b, 7c, 7d, 7e, 7h
7th Grade: 7a, 7b, 7c, 7d, 7e, 7h
9th-12th Grades: Earth Sciences 6a, 6b, 6c, 6d
Download California Science Standards here. (pdf)
OER for Teaching Investigative Science
Here we present both the original materials from the 60 minute presentation at CSTA, as well as many expanded resources so participants can dig deeper into the ideas and practices we introduced.
Powerpoint Slides and Handout
Download the original powerpoint slides and handout from the workshop here[1].
Workshop Activities
Introductory Activity
Teachers were asked to estimate the percentage of their class curriculum they found from outside resources and to list where they commonly found valuable resources (online and from other sources).
OER Activity
Participants are given an example of a short open educational resource from OER Commons and asked to review it and offer any modifications they would need to make to incorporate it into a lesson in their class.
The What, Why, Who and How of Open Educational Resources (OER)
What is OER?
Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available to use and reuse.
Examples of OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and other tools, materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge.
For a general introduction to OER, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_educational_resources
Advantages of OER in Investigative Science
Using OER in teaching brings a number of advantages, including:
- opening up abundant new sources of learning and teaching material
- creating low- or no-cost avenues to high quality material
- giving teachers the ability to create and modify content to meet the needs of their specific students and situation
- enabling teachers and other experts to refine and improve content over time
- developing collaborative methods and tools
Who is doing OER? Examples of OER providers
Higher Education institutions
- UC Berkeley offers webcasts of many courses
- Foothill De Anza Community College is putting up courses here.
- MIT's OpenCourseWare project inspired many other efforts in higher education, and now has 1800 courses online. Note their courses of interest for high school, including science offerings.
- Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative
- Utah State OpenCourseWare
- Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Johns Hopkins School of Public Health OpenCourseWare
You can see additional lists of Higher Ed courseware here , and get the background on OpenCourseWare at wikipedia, and at the OpenCourseWare Consortium.
Research and Reference Publishers
Content Repositories and Authoring Platforms
Teacher tools such as
OER and Investigative Science
Investigative science and OER are a natural fit. Rather than looking at learning as the accumulation of a series of abstract facts to be accumulated and recalled, investigative science has students interacting with the real world to build knowledge, testing ideas and theories, and wrestling with prior knowledge and sense data, often with other people. Integrating OER into your investigative science helps to build up the "problem space" which the students will be exploring.
OER also helps teachers to model the processes they want their students to follow. If you teach investigative science out of a canned program, it may still seem that your main role as a teacher is just to "deliver" the information or program efficiently. But teachers also adapt, investigating what is working with their students as they teach and plan.
For a terrific talk about "Supporting Authentic Learning Environments," see this YouTube video (part one, part two) from the 2008 ISKME EdForum. In the video, Sam Donovan (Assistant Professor of Science Education at the University of Pittsburgh, and one of the directors of the BioQuest curriculum consortium).
Learn more about investigative case-based learning (ICBL), a kind of problem-based learning, at the BioQuest site. Key to the ICBL method are the "three p's" -- Problem posing, Problem Solving, and Peer persuasion.
International OER Exchange Pilot Project
The International OER Exchange Pilot is a project that supports the international exchange of information and understanding through freely available resources among teachers and students, especially in the area of environmental science and climate change investigation. Specifically, the project facilitates classroom exchanges of teaching and learning resources among middle school science teachers and their students in various regions of the world.
Collaborative Tools and OER
OER Commons allows you to find, rate, and share high-quality open educational resources.
For detailed instructions on how to register and use OER Commons, see OER_and_Web_2.0_Teaching_Part_One#Using OER Commons
Examples of Investigative Science OER
Below you will find some of the examples of open resources in science we discussed in the workshop, as well as a others people have suggested.
Do not feel limited by these resources, however. Use OER Commons to find many other examples of rich resources for investigative science.
Climate Change Resources
A quick search of OER Commons returns a number of interesting resources on climate change. Some of the kinds of resources include:
- Background material, like this white paper from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
- Video resources, such as this video clip from Nova, which looks at the difference between weather and climate.
- Full courses like this one from The Open University: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?name=S250_3. Or [2] this one from Beloit, which uses data analysis to look for evidence of climate change.
- Activities like these from the EPA: http://epa.gov/climatechange/wycd/ORWKit.html, or these from the Earth Exploration Toolbook (Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College).
- Data and Images from Nasa's Earth Observatory
- Virtual Field Trips, like this one to North Carolina's coastal plain to explore coastal erosion and sea level change.
OER in other Science Areas
- Check out the resources on OER Commons that have been tagged (by users) "Earthquake." Among the resources here are anactivity on building in earthquake-prone areas.
- Searching on OER Commons reveals hundreds more resources on earthquakes, including video segments from NOVA and the Library of Congress.
Strategies for Searching and Interacting with OER
- Think about what you are looking for. Do you simply need a very specific image? Do you want to see other lesson plans that teachers have developed and taught? Or are you trying to build the background knowledge and "problem space" for a unit? Knowing what you're looking for will help you refine your strategy for searching.
- . Try using the various search tools offered by OER Commons. The advanced search features allow you to find particular kinds of content (webcasts, lesson plans, etc); and narrow down your subject using Boolean searching; and find content by other parameters (language, licensing, etc). Besides regular and advanced search, you can also search by tags.
- Remember to tag and rate the resources on OER Commons that you found helpful-- or not. Adding information about a resource ("I might use this if I had a two-hour class" or "You can do this activity without the expensive apparatus described") will help everyone that comes after you.
- Based on what you are looking for, you can look at other repositories (Flickr, using the Creative Commons search), a university's Open CourseWare site, and so on.
- Share your own work so that other teachers can find and adapt it as well.
Going Further with OER
If you'd like to learn more about using OER and Web 2.0 in the classroom, you can take a look at our self-paced activities here.
Specifically, you can find more resources about OER here.
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