Introducing DEN

I recently found out about the Discovery Education Network (DEN), a teaching resource that has been provided to us in the Surrey School District. It is a website that has a ton of useful content and activities to enhance the curriculum and engage students in their learning (as well as online utilities to help teachers manage their classes use of the tools). Plus, it has the BC learning outcomes built in, allowing you to search for content by PLO - an added bonus!

I've been able to find a lot of videos for my science learning outcomes (specifically human body for the grade 5's). Sometimes my problem is that there is too much content to sort through. Usually I try and stick to videos that have lesson plans and worksheets attached to help me with my planning.

Setting up my class was also really easy, as our Surrey Tech Guys have put in all the students in Surrey into their login database.  The students use their Surrey-issued email address as their account, and when I search to add students to my class, my view is already filtered so I can only see students at my school.  I can create separate classes for my 5's and 6's, and assign different content to each of them.

I've recently become a DEN Star, which means that I've shared my DEN experiences with staff and now have access to more features.  Expect more updates as I find new things to share!

Technology and the Human Body

I wanted to have a project that my students could work on as we learned about the different systems that make up the human body.  A traditional approach (and commonly used one) is using a life-sized cutout that is created by tracing a student who is lying on a piece of paper.  Then organs are printed or drawn and glued into place.

So I gave the cutout a try.  It was a disaster. The projects are huge and difficult to store.  Students were always losing pieces and one group never finished their skeleton. So I needed to make a change. How could I accomplish the same goal with less mess, wasted paper, and wasted time?

Enter technology.  I realized what I was really after was for the students to recognize the size and location relationships between themselves and their organs. So I used Comic Life and iPads.  I had the students take pictures of themselves and then gave them images of the various organs, so they could place the images above their torso. They can stretch, rotate and resize the organs to fit their own body size.  In the end, they end up with a picture that can become part of a "my body" ebook or portfolio.

Compared to the paper endeavour, I found that my students were overall more engaged in the process.  It was much easier, and took way less time, for a greater degree of learning!