Science in the News!
We created a Science in the New project this month. At home each student had to research at least seven articles about science in the news. I decided to use the website Newsela.com in order to find my research articles. I knew that for the week we would be focusing on Space Science so my articles that I found revolved around Space Articles. Newsela is a great website because it is easy to use and provides many great resource for various different topics in current events. I learned about his website when I used it in my Social Studies Methods Class for my lesson plan. I created a glogster to display the articles that I found and the links to each. The glogster includes a fun space design and clipart that pertains to the topic. Here is the link to my glogster.
Below are the articles I chose:
(This first one is a text set with about 5 articles within about Nasa's New findings)
Each article was very interesting to learn about. I love reading about current events because they are changes and advancements that are occurring in our everyday lives and they can greatly affect our present and future! An important aspect of learning about space and the new discoveries is through research of current articles and also through watching the news. I created a glogster to display the links of the various articles I read about astronomical changes in space science. My articles discuss NASA space telescopes, unusual galaxies, many discoveries and the important of the many telescopes. Each of these articles were very interesting to read and they explain into the many discoveries by NASA and by several University Students. One major advancement was the Spitzer Space Telescope. The Spitzer Space Telescope was important because it had led to several discoveries for America.
The next class we were engaged in an inquiry lesson by Dr. Smirnova. On eclass was a Class powerpoint that included the different planets and some galaxies. Each student had to access the powerpoint and pick a planet to research. I picked Jupiter as my planet! Here is the link to the class powerpoint. It was interesting to learn so many details and facts about Jupiter! I did not know that Jupiter is the fourth brightest object in the solar system! In the pictures it never appears so bright but it was interesting to learn that and many other facts. Another fact I learned was that the well known "great red spot" on Jupiter is actually a huge storm that has been raging for over 350 years! How interesting, a storm lasting that long? Wow! Anyways, my powerpoint slides included brief but important facts about Jupiter. Below are pictures of my slides! I also included an intagrok which is actually a huge web with information and resources to visit in relation to a particular topic. Mine is all about Jupiter! You may visit it here, to learn more!
After completing our slides in the powerpoint, we had to work in groups to create a type of wordart. The various websites we used to do this were: Worlde, Tagul, Tagcrowd, ABCya, wordart and Tagxedo. I worked with two other group members Alyssa and Stephanie to make our word cloud. All of the websites were chosen so our group decided to pick Tagcrowd. Tagcrowd was actually one of my least favorite websites to create a word cloud because it is not very fun. It does not allow you to pick an exciting shape or design. It also asked us to include the URLS to the websites and articles we used. We each picked two articles to include. However, when the tagcrowd was generated it included many irrelevant words in it that we did not want to include. We worked on deleting many of them but it did not work. With time restrictions we were not able to completely redo our project. Below is the word cloud we created.
After creating our word cloud, we then moved into creating a timeline based on a particular word from our articles that we read or our word cloud. The word we decided to investigate was the Space Spitzer Telescope. We all had interest in it and thought it would be a great idea to learn more and create a timeline of the discoveries made with it. We each research the discoveries and the development of this telescope. My group members provided the information to me and I moved it from the google docs to the actual timeline. The timeline has pictures that correspond with each event. We used TimeToast to create our timeline. This website was simple to follow and created a neat and appropriate timeline for the assignment. Below is our timeline! In the first picture is the general picture of the timeline. As your mouse scrolls over the different points the various events pop up. If you click on them they provide more information about the event. This is shown in the second picture! Here is the link to our timeline.
Overall, I enjoyed this project and really wish that we had more time to complete it. I feel that most groups felt their wasn't enough time, but if there was we could have created much more visibly interesting presentations and projects. However, I think that we all did a great job. This project was good because it allowed us to experiment with even more technological tools that can be used in the classroom to engage students in learning. In addition, it gave us students a chance to experience an inquiry lesson ourselves. I liked learning about current events and I definitely think that they should be incorporated into a classroom environment because they are events that are happening right now in the world we live in and they can interest many students in reading and learning about science (or any subject). Current events can be incorporated into lesson plan ideas much like what I did in my social studies class. We created a small mini-lesson on a current even and made a cooperative learning experience for our class! Overall, I enjoyed learning about the advancements that are being made in space science currently and in making these projects and working with my classmates!
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