I’ve come to the conclusion that for the combination of my specific students (after spending a few weeks getting to know my grade 9s as learners), my strengths/weaknesses and the nature of our content, that we need to have choice in how we consolidate. Many of my students have they told me that they learn best by writing things out. Fair enough. That is a valid learning technique. Other students have said that they HATE taking notes and that they never refer back to them. Some students say that they can learn from taking notes, but tend to lose them and never refer back to them later on.

In our class, for chemistry, we decided to do short, consolidation pieces every so often to make sure that we are all on the same page. Yesterday we did a consolidation piece (about half an hour) about the structure of the atom and an introduction to the periodic table of elements (the one thing that every student said that they wanted to demystify).

Some students have chosen to write their notes on paper and keep a physical notebook. Other students have chosen to keep all of their notes in Evernote. They type on their phones or laptops. When I questioned one guy about how he was going to do the diagrams (in that way a teachers questions when they think that they already know the answer and assume the student will do as I assume and grab a piece of paper), he showed me that he ALREADY had found similar diagrams online and copied and pasted them into Evernote. Wow. Ok. Great. I just checked this students evernote now (we have shared folders) and he has gone above and beyond what we did in class. He found more detailed diagrams. He found an extension piece of content (about how molecules act in the different states of matter). I’m thoroughly impressed. If he was using pen and paper instead of his phone, it never would have happened.

One other student used her wacom tablet and turned our lesson into a piece of art (that I of course, stole and posted on our class blog for others to use). Many of the students wrote their notes on paper and then took a picture of it to put into their evernote folder.

Its all about what works for them. I told them that they are responsible for proving to me at any time that they have an organizational system to be able to quickly, on a dime, pull up the information they need to know about WHMIS, Lab Safety, Online Safety and the structure of an atom. It makes me giddy with excitement to see them taking the initiative to choose what works best for them. Those skills will take them well beyond the content we will cover in grade 9 science that well may end up insignificant in their daily adult lives (but of course, I will never tell them this).

Have you had students who found an alternative method of organizing course materials or summaries for future reference? Maybe one that I could share with my students?

This time however, I have Chris Hadfield and the Canadian Space Agency. We have a bubble detector in our classroom that is the same as @Cmdr_Hadfield has on the ISS, being used to measure radiation. We are sharing our results with people all over Canada and beyond. We have access to photos each day that show us what the Earth looks like from the ISS that are being tweeted out in real-time, not released years later. We have videos showing us how they wash their hands in space. We caught a live stream of Chris Hadfield talking from space with William Shatner, and tweeted with people from all over Canada about what we were watching. My students self-imposed homework was to learn about William Shatner and why those tweets between him, @Cmdr_Hadfield, Buzz Aldrin and Nimoy were funny (if they were not already Star Trek watchers). They have taken an inquisitive stance to learning neat facts about space travel and the International Space Station. Brainstorming a list of pros and cons of space exploration left them with more questions than facts.

We have been archiving tweets from the CSA, Chris Hadfield, NASA, etc. Students are actually looking at them on their own time and reading, following links, etc. Students are asking me questions that I have no idea how to answer. One googled the size of the space station and then with a small group, likened each dimension to something familiar to them.

I used the media as an engagement factor during the first week of grade 9 science and expected to quickly move on and still resort to the space unit as the last thing we do in science (knowing that time would be short and it would be rushed – it always is). What has happened, is that through student inquiry and passion, tweeted links and resources we have found a way to make space exploration the over-arching theme for the whole course.

Our research project with Chris Hadfield and other schools has us measuring neutron radiation. What is a neutron? Is a neutron always dangerous? A student with a vague understanding of the atom asked me “aren’t there neutrons everywhere?, why is the radiation detector not picking up those?”. And, so we go into chemistry next monday while doing a research project with the ISS and studying neutron radiation data.

Then, as I’m procrastinating and trying to avoid round three of digging myself out from under all this wonderful snow, I get a tweet “check out this video”. Its a video about space exploration and how our view of the earth has changed. It talked about viewing the world as one big ecosystem when looking down on it. And, with a flash a light bulb went off in my head. We can use space to lead us right into the ecosystems unit as well.

Now, I just need to find the perfect connection to get us into the electricity unit and we’ll be set. We’ll start by looking at energy consumption and balance in the thrust portion of take-off and then solar energy and the ISS.

This unit, which I have always secretly feared, has quickly taken over my grade 9 science course. The students passion and inquisitiveness has inspired me to feed that passion. They will each take a part of our space curriculum that speaks to them and share what they learn with the rest of the class. I am excited to see what they create and share.  I am forever indebted to the Canadian Space Agency for making education and public engagement a priority this year. They have greatly impacted my ability to teach a topic normally so far out of my comfort zone. They’ve also given purpose and a context for me to really focus on digital citizenship with my students this semester.