Months later..... Nov 6th, election day - 2012

As soon as the school year started life got so busy I forgot to update this blog! So here's an update on how the RET experience this summer has influenced my school year.

First of all I can't stop talking about my summer experience - to other teachers, to students, to my department head, to my friends, to everyone!

I have brought my poster to school and walked a lot of people through the research I did.

More than just talk, I have started long discussions with my classes as to what a career in research looks like. What would their day to day be like. What sort of support would they have (a research team), what challenges they might face (unexpected results, no results), what success might look like (new technologies, presented papers).

With my seniors we have talked a lot about universities that are also research institutions (like BU). One thing I learned from all of the graduate, undergraduate, and post-grad students I worked with this summer, is that is was really important for them to seek out research opportunities and connections on their own. No one will come to them at the end of a class and say 'you should join this research team' - they will have to seek out opportunities.

Aside from just enthusiasm and conversation, my involvement in the technology at the school has magnified. Our school is adopting a 1:1 iPad initiative for all our students starting Sept 2013. In the meantime I have become one of only 6 iPad Pilot teachers at the Prep. This means that I will give my students iPads for them to use 24 hrs a day, I attend weekly meetings where all the iPad teachers and a representative from our tech department discuss our successes, failures, research, and new ideas, and I engage in many online and email discussions of current literature examining iPads as a learning tool. o

Although my students don't have their iPads yet (we are looking at January), a few of the other pilot teachers are up and running. Spending this much time discussing the future of technology as a teaching tool has been exciting, daunting, and given me a huge number of ideas. For one, I have finally ordered my RET classroom supplies. Since all of the students will have iPad soon I have convinced the science department head to order the vernier software for all of the iPads going out to science students. (Gary Smith who many of you know b/c he was an RET a few years back is my department head - which, by the way, means he was REALLY easy to convince/was already planning to do it). I also used the RET funding to purchase two Spectrometers for the vernier system. They will allow students to not just look at emission spectrum with the handheld prism spectrometers, but allow them to use these sensors and have an emission spectrum appear on their devices! The software also allows for a great analysis into the Ryburg equation and Lyman series. I still have work to do to develop a solid lesson (my lesson plan that I wrote this summer needs some tweaking for real life), but I am really excited to use the spectrometers, vernier, and the ipads all together in my chemistry classes!

Here's the only problem - we just learned about Bohr, hydrogen and emission spectrum last week. We didn't have the ipads or new probes yet, so we did it with the older spectrometers. I will say my new knowledge of photonics allowed me to connect this entire experiment to the idea of measuring the unseen with light we can see (or sense) and what I did in the lab this summer imaging viruses. That added an entirely new depth to the conversation. I may not be able to use my new technological tools and toys until next fall, but in the meantime I am doing a better job with the tools I have. (With the exception of a broken nitrogen gas tube.)

Come to think of it - I wish I had taken pictures of the whole activity since a blog with no pictures is pretty boring.

Oh well! So I'm off to a good start. See you next time.
Mrs. G