Tech Lesson Reflection

I taught a tech lesson while students were about a week into their cell unit. Students had already taken notes on the structure/function of organelles and they had also discussed the differences between plant and animal cells. Students had not yet had time to explore a visual of a cell to associate images with each of the organelles and definitions.

I used this website from the University of Utah to allow students to explore both an plant cell and and animal cell at their own pace. Each student had his or her own Chromebook and optional headphones in order to work individually at his or her own pace. Students were also given a worksheet with sentence frames to guide their learning as they explored the website. Sentences were taken directly from the text of the website so that students who chose not to use headphones or who have a difficult time transcribing oral information could still be successful. Many students worked at different paces so the front of the worksheet was mantaory and the back of the page was a more challenging extension piece for students who finish quickly.

What did students learn?

The following day, students did a Kahoot quiz on everything they had learned about cells and organelles. There was a question about the cytoskeleton that students would have known only from the online activity the previous day because it had not been addressed during class notes. The majority of students answered the question correctly. This was really nice evidence to show that students indeed gained information from the self-directed exploratory activity.

Hopefully students were also able to create a visual map of cells and organelles that will help them remember structure/function in the future. Hopefully they also learned that there are resources online that can be useful as study tools. This website was a little above grade level but students did really well navigating through information they were able to understand.

What would I change next time?

I am glad students were motivated to complete their work individually but next time I would like to see more cooperation among group memebrs to help each other navigate to different parts of the website or complete portions of the worksheet. I think it is natural for students to want to work individually while on a coputer (especially if they choose to use headphones) but next time I might assign both sides of the worksheet as required work. I would also suggest to students that they divide and conquer- maybe by having students work individually for the first 10 min and then giving them time to explain their assigned section to their partner so they both walk away with complete worksheets.

This experience with Chromebooks (also involving Kahoot and an online NEO quiz the next day) went well and I will not hesitate to use any of these tech tools in the future.