Do You Kahoot?

      Kahoot is an interactive "game" system that assesses student knowledge while they answer content related questions in a timed fashion.  At the start of the blog, teachers can upload video or music as students sign in.  For this particular example, (astronomy unit), I uploaded "The Planets" by Gustav Holst, which is a classical collection of music based on the planets.

    Students sign in before starting. I require students to use their first names and not nick-names because I collect data from this exercise and need to know who each student is. (More about data in a minute)

    Once students log in, the teacher starts the game.  A teacher can find already created reviews on Kahoot.  I generally design my own.   Questions that I design include content based questions and photos/illustrations to go along with the questions, whenever possible.
When designing the game, a teacher can choose from a list of times that they would like the question to be available (20secs, 30 secs, 60secs, etc).  If all students answer prior to that time, the quesion automatically ends.

    Students read the question on the Smart Board and then use their mobile device (Chromebook) to answer the questions.

     Teachers then have the opportunity to review each question and discuss.  At the end of the game, teachers can save their data (who answered what questions correctly) on an Excel sheet.  I offer extra credit on a unit test to the top 10 scorers of each class.

A link to Kahoot (For teachers to create their own)    Students log in to Kahoot.it

Straight at the Sun

This year we also focused on the fact that technology doesn't just mean using the computers and videos.   We tried to expose students to technology in the field of science.  In this activity we had a guest speaker talk to the students about solar telescopes and how they are used.  Students not only learned what can be seen, but they had the oppotunity to experience it first had.
Students also had a chance to use a spectroscope to determine elements that were on the sun (star).
Students were able to use their own cameras from phones and connect them to the telescope to take their very own pictures of the sun, safely.   Students then identified sun spots.  Student pictures of the sun were used to compare pictures of the sun from SOHO over the next several days. Students then drew conclusions about movements of the sun spots. Utilizing background knowledge from class, students drew conclusions utilizing level three vocabulary.