Enriching Science with Google Drawings
When I first imagined a digital 1:1 classroom, I naively imagined that technology would replace all physical materials; that there would be no need for pencil and paper.
Yes,we do use Chromebooks in the place of pen and paper. The keyboard acts as the main vessel for writing and paper and reading materials are stored in the cloud. However, we do still conduct lessons using physical materials, pen and paper.
I taught a Science lesson this week regarding the part of the plant that our fruit and vegetables come from. I first provided my learners with some paper, pencils and various fruit and vegetables. They started by drawing a picture of a plant on their paper, before discussing which part of the plant the items could come from. There was a lot of rich discussion around this and with a little scaffolding the children were able to correctly place the items on their drawing.
From here they began to consider other fruit and vegetables that they ate and were asked to create a google drawing to illustrate their learning. They were then able to use google to learn more about the parts of a plant and where food comes from, while I roamed ensuring that they did not pick up any misconceptions. It was fabulous to see the children interacting with scientific knowledge and Several of the children uploaded their drawings to their blogs, writing about the Science lessons they had taken part in over the week.
Yes,we do use Chromebooks in the place of pen and paper. The keyboard acts as the main vessel for writing and paper and reading materials are stored in the cloud. However, we do still conduct lessons using physical materials, pen and paper.
I taught a Science lesson this week regarding the part of the plant that our fruit and vegetables come from. I first provided my learners with some paper, pencils and various fruit and vegetables. They started by drawing a picture of a plant on their paper, before discussing which part of the plant the items could come from. There was a lot of rich discussion around this and with a little scaffolding the children were able to correctly place the items on their drawing.
From here they began to consider other fruit and vegetables that they ate and were asked to create a google drawing to illustrate their learning. They were then able to use google to learn more about the parts of a plant and where food comes from, while I roamed ensuring that they did not pick up any misconceptions. It was fabulous to see the children interacting with scientific knowledge and Several of the children uploaded their drawings to their blogs, writing about the Science lessons they had taken part in over the week.
I must admit I naively thought the same thing... I remember telling people before the school year started that my students weren't going to have books or pencils at all... haha, man I was wrong! You are right, they are such a useful tool to use along side the netbooks/I-pads. Yay for effective teaching when we have so many amazing tools available to us!
ReplyDeleteHaha, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that! We are lucky to have so many tools available.
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