EEND 676 Artifact #2: Biology Final Exam Padlet Study Group

EEND 676 Artifact #2:


BIOLOGY FINAL EXAM PADLET STUDY GROUP




I created the following assignment for this semester's final exam.  I have never used Padlet before, but am excited about the opportunity to try it in the next few weeks!!  I think it will be really beneficial for students to have a way to pick the brains of their peers without having to leave and meet up.  Although, I think study parties and meeting at a coffee house are extremely beneficial, this does solve the issue of getting students together.  Plus, students can come and go as they please at any time, leave comments, answer questions, even study live with another student. 


I do expect some issues, mainly how do I convince or promote students to utilize this tool.  They have a lot going on during finals week so how can I make their time with this tool beneficial.  The key to the success of this tool really rides on how many students actively join and use the tool including revisiting to access answered questions and comments.


Here is a quick  intro to the activity:




Let’s be honest, studying for finals isn’t always a lot of fun.  One thing that always helped me with studying for final exams was forming study groups.  The only problem was where to meet and how we would get there?  Well, I may have the solution for you!  No need for Mom or Dad to warm up the car… I’ve created a Padlet for all 100+ of my biology students to join and make one huge study group.


“Wow, how do I become a member of this amazing study group?”, you ask….


All you have to do is participate, learn from and help your fellow classmates.  Here are the requirements:


  1. Using your google school account access this Padlet: https://padlet.com/jim_nielsen/biofinalexam


  1. Locate the three columns at the top of the Padlet and post:
    1. 1 question you have from the study guide that you need help with
    2. 1 topic that you have mastered and feel comfortable teaching
    3. 1 resource you found while studying that you feel could help your peers


    3.  All three posts must be posted by December 15th so that students can use the resource
         for a week before finals.  


    4.  While studying, post 2 “thank yous” in the comments section of any of the columns that    
          helped you study and why.


    5.  Utilize this amazing resource that you created with your peers!


    6.  Your posts will be graded using the following rubric provided below:




Thanks,

Jim

Comments

  1. Maggie MaslowskiDecember 4, 2017 at 3:35 PM

    This is an amazing resource. The kids are doing the hard work, yet they are also the ones benefiting from it. Instead of you putting together all the resources, the students will do it. Such an amazing resource for students to share with themselves as well as one to share with parents.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

678 Module 8 Discussion

Hello Class, What a topic for this week's blog... Fake News.  Obviously, this saying has caught wind with our current President's use of the term at every press conference.  In fact, it is probably the only thing I agree with him on and understand what he is talking about... Especially as a science teacher! Teaching students about reputable websites or sources has always been a critical aspect of science education.  But now, more than ever, with the internet and freedom to publish any nonsense you want with social media, teaching the difference between credible and reliable resources is an extremely important aspect of the curriculum. So much so that I think my number 1 job as a science educator is to make more scientifically literate citizens.  This means that they need to be able to research, think and come up with their own conclusion based on real evidence.  This will determine many of their choices later in life.  Such as who they vote for, what ...
Read more

EEND 675 Artifact #2: Palm Oil and Deforestation-blend space

EEND 675 Artifact 2 Jim Nielsen The second artifact that I am going to discuss was my favorite piece I created for this entire course.  The website was suggested to us by our instructor as a really good blend space, something that I have never heard of before.  Hyper-docs have become really popular in our district and I see teachers using them all the time.  Personally, I never really understood why hyper-docs where that interesting and I honestly thought they were just a glorified listing of websites.  That is why I am so excited that I was introduced to the website www.tes.com/lessons.  So excited that I have already hosted a PLC "training" on the website and have multiple other teachers using the website for their classes now.  Again, it really is awesome that we are learning about technology tools that we can actually apply in our classroom. The blend splace, tes.com/lessons, is really a supped up version of a hyper-doc.  But it is so much mor...
Read more

Module 4

Hello class, For this module I decided to switch gears and talk about the most important unit in my biology class, genetics.  Really, everything I teach in biology is rooted in genetics and understanding basic DNA structure and function is critical to understanding the entire course.  When searching for an Open-Educational Resource for genetics that met my needs for our districts curriculum I stumbled upon this website: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/ The website is from the University of Utah's Genetic Science Learning Center and might be one of the best ready-made online resource I have ever stumbled across.  When evaluating an online resource the most important criteria it must meet for me is how closely it matches the performance expectations for our unit.  As part of the district curriculum writing team, we chose to use the new Next Gen Science Standards (NGSS) to write our new curriculum.  This one website does an excellent j...
Read more