Using Technology in Biology: Reflections

To work on my goal for improving the use of technology in Biology, we have embarked in a variety of projects over the past 4 months. I’m going to focus on three of the project and some of the evidence from students.

Cells Parts and Functions Webquest

Overview

• Innerlife of cells video
• Cells parts and function webquest:
  • collected sites for them to visit
  • used a form to draw and list function of cell part

Student’s feedback

Engagement: this was a little surprising to me. From anecdotes, students said they were tired of webquests, having seen them in so many other classes.

Here are some quotes student reported in survey monkey to the question, ” What other ideas or thoughts do you have to share about this activity?”

“I learn better from direct teaching, but it was a good starting point. I am really glad we went over it in class and get a completed web quest to refer to.”

• “It allow you to learn the cell parts and functions quick and efficiently”
• “It wasn’t that fun, but it gives you good study notes”
• “i think that sence(sic) you are seeing the actual part you are learning not just mentally but also vishually (sic)”
• “The online activities helped me but I found myself struggling to pay attention. It didn’t really stimulate my brain at all.”
• “It was fun, cool to see the differnat(sic) cells and what they did.”

So, those mixed responses were helpful. I think we’ll reconsider how we use this activity next time. Perhaps we can find another “hook” for students to find this information worthwhile to learn.

Cellular transport – Molecular Workbench

For this project, we used a variety of animations, along with a diffusion lab as the “critical input experiences” for the content. As a way to check for student’s understanding we used Molecular Workbench. This works best if students download the software, rather than using the online version (for our use of Macs, anyway).

We can see student reports like this:

We found some pros and cons of this program

Pros

• Independent – students were able to do this for homework
• We did not have to invent this assessment
• Student reports are created – allows me to check for understanding

Cons

• Glitches with reporting – we could not access all of the student’s reports (we’re still working on this problem)
• Student reported frustration – with repetition in the activity and inability to send report to me

Continued in next post

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