Humble Pie, New Beginnings and Is Knowledge Obsolete?

WHAT AM I DOING TO HELP KIDS ACHIEVE?

HOW DO I KNOW WHEN THEY ARE THERE?

WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE?

      Well, the data is in....I spoke to a grad student at Miami University who number crunched my data of pre and post test.  Essentially, there is good and bad news.  The good news is students improved.  The bad news is not by very much.  There could be many reasons for this.  First and foremost I have to figure that I, as their teacher, have a huge amount of control about the learning that goes on in the classroom.  That is what I can control so that is what I need to worry about.  I could yell, complain or rationalize away the results but honestly...I hate when students do just that. So what do I do now?????

     First, I need to incorporate more questions that involve, "What is the answer?" and "WHY is it the right answer?"  Coming up with the correct answer can be done in seconds on Google.  But WHY is it the right answer develops a new level of understanding.  There is not much out there that involves scientific reason specifically for chemistry.

     Second, keep up with labs but less cook book labs.  I really believe that the tri fold presentation approach (which I have shown and discussed in previous blog entries) is the way to go.  It forces kids at all levels to try and decide and ask "What is a good hypothesis?",  "What do I need to do to be safe?", "How should my data table look?  What data is important?", "Is there a connection between my hypothesis and results?",  "What is a reasonable conclusion based on the data?"

     Vocabulary...I have gotten away from it but I am going back..In the Miami program we were forced to work through extremely technical scientific articles.  It started out as if I was reading Greek.  Slowly I began to learn what some of the words and terms meant (thank you "google scholar").  A few key terms were used over and over and things started making sense.  The experience provided understanding and empathy for what students go through.  

     So...three things I can do....two part questions that involve reasoning....less cook book labs... and incorporating vocabulary.

     My next idea (really more of a question).  Is knowledge obsolete?  Here is the idea...I had students do problems on an online homework service (University of Texas homework service).  It is used by many schools, provides instant feedback and allows me to see how students are doing on certain topics.  One minor problem...just for fun I pulled up some college level problems and just for the heck of it pasted them into google.  I got 100% correct without ever reading the question.  So, is knowing how to use Google more important than knowledge????