Implementing Investigations
Introduction
December's online event has two parts. The first (Thursday, December 7 through Wednesday, December 13) is to share the implementation results of your first (or second) DataTools investigation. The second part (through Sunday December 17) is to respond to the posting of at least two of your colleagues. The goals of this event are to 1) benefit from sharing and problem solving with colleagues who are doing similar work and 2) in a more general way, to continue to build a community of support for the longer term, hopefully beyond the end of your active participation in this project.
In Part 1, we ask you to address four specific questions as you describe the implementation. The four questions and examples of some responses are provided below.
In Part 2, you may ask someone for more information, or share how you addressed a challenge similar to one faced by the teacher you are responding to.
Please check the Web site regularly once you post your implementation story, to see if others have asked you a question.
Part 1: Sharing Implementation Stories (Thursday, December 7 through Wednesday, December 13)
- Briefly describe the investigation you carried out with students. Include the title, the dataset and analysis tools used, as well as the key question that students investigated. For example, The investigation I implemented is an adaptation of the EET chapter, Analyzing the Antarctic Ozone Hole. Students used ImageJ and TOMS ozone images to explore seasonal changes in ozone concentration. Students were placed in teams organized by year, analyzing month-by-month data for each year. Years examined were 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003 and 2005. They investigated the question, "How does ozone concentration over the south pole change seasonally?
- What did students do during the investigation? For example, I downloaded data from the NASA TOMS Website ahead of time and made it available on the computers that students used. Students used ImageJ to collect area measurements. They used Excel to create graphs, one for each group of students. Then they analyzed graphs and shared their results orally.
- Reflect on how you feel the investigation went with students? Were you satisfied with the level of student engagement? What sorts of questions did student ask? What insights did they have? How proficient are they in using the software?
- How will you carry out this investigation differently in the future?
(For this event, we will not have separate discussion groups. All of us will be contributing to one big discussion.)
Part 2: Discussing Your Experiences with your Colleagues (through Sunday December 17)
Respond to the posting of at least two of your colleagues.