Science Teaching v 2.0

I’m not usually a fan of multiple choice testing but fun quizzes that allow feedback, engage students and let them practice skills are useful. I came accross MyStudio on Edublogger.

There are a number of features I like about this tool

• Easily embed text, images, audio and video
• Ability to create ‘non-collaborative’ quizzes or “collaborative” quizzes (allows others to add further questions to your quiz)
• Quizzes are easy to embed into blog posts

There are a number of disadvantages that cause problems for science quizzes:

• You cannot format text in the answer boxes so chemical formulae cannot be used directly
• the 60 character limit constricts the types of answers that are possible.

I particularly like the ease with which video can be uploaded in a quiz. Clips of chemical reactions can help visual learners by reducing the dependence on text or static images. Using video clips produced by the students encourages engagement.

The process of producing a quiz illustrates neatly how the use web 2.0 technologies is changing traditional pedagogy. A number of simple media tools are involved to author material that would have required the assistance of a publisher a few years ago.

• Using a digital camera to take movie clips (preferably done by a student while the teacher is drinking coffee and supervising)
• Using widows movie maker to edit the files before uploading to You Tube You Tube
• using Jing for a screenshot from a powerpoint presentation
• embedding the video files in a MyStudio quiz

I am currently trialling the quiz with students on my school blog for homework and classroom use.

Hope to start using Asus Eee’s in the not to distant future as a cheap web browser to allow students to be “connected” at school as well as home. The whole web 2.0 thing grinds to a halt while students have to “power down” in the usual disconnected high school classroom (no I don’t want another pod of computers in a room I have to take my students to)

This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 11:10 pm and is filed under web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.