To grow as a teacher, I feel that it is essential for me to continue learning about research-based techniques, best practices, and new classroom tools.  Within the Master of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) program at Michigan State University, I have gained a much deeper understanding of how digital tools can be used to support and enhance student learning.  Upon completion of this program, I intend to continue my education by focusing my attention in three areas.  For one, I plan to investigate how problem-based learning (also known as project-based learning or PBL) can be used to promote critical thinking skills and scientific literacy among my students.  I also plan to learn more about inquiry-based labs to use with both my AP biology and freshman biology students.  These labs will hopefully provide students with more authentic science experiences than the traditional “cookbook” labs that high school science teachers (including myself) have been using for many years.  Finally, I hope to further expand my knowledge of specific digital tools designed for use within the classroom by exploring training opportunities through Google for Education.  I have selected these three areas of focus primarily by considering the benefits all three approaches will have for my students.  For example, both PBL and inquiry-based labs have the potential to help students think more deeply and independently.  From what I know about Google Apps for Education, they have the potential to provide growth-producing feedback to students and help students learn to collaborate effectively.

 

I first encountered research regarding PBL in one of my MAET courses, and since then, I have been intrigued by the possibility of using PBL in my classroom.  In a problem-based learning unit, students are typically presented with an ill-structured problem that does not have a clear or simple solution.  Students then work collaboratively in teams to research the issue using high-quality digital and print resources.  Some of these resources may be provided by the teacher, but students also learn to locate legitimate, relevant resources on their own.  Once teams of students have gathered information about the issue, they devise a complex, multi-faceted solution to address the issue.  Overall, I feel that PBL will help my students develop analytical thinking skills, and I would like to learn more about developing PBL units and implementing them successfully in a high school science classroom.  I plan to start educating myself about PBL by exploring the Project-Based Learning Professional Development Guide provided online by Edutopia.  This guide starts with a background on the basics of PBL and why it’s an important instructional technique.  Later in the guide, it provides specific workshop activities and resources highlighting sample units implemented in real classrooms at various educational levels and in different content areas.  To learn more about how to help students develop the content literacy skills they will need during the research process, I plan to purchase and read the book Literacy in the Science Classroom by Millie Blanford (published in 2015).

 

In the past, I have been skeptical about incorporating inquiry-based labs into my classroom repertoire because they often require several class periods to complete.  However, I’ve recently begun to feel that it is more important to investigate a few aspects of the curriculum very deeply than do a surface-level coverage of the entire curriculum.  With this new mentality, I am very interested in using inquiry-based experiments to give students authentic laboratory experiences.  In traditional high school science labs--often called “cookbook labs”--the teacher provides the students with a research question, a hypothesis, a specific procedure, and set methods for analyzing the data they gather.  In contrast, an inquiry lab gives students the opportunity to ask their own research questions and devise their own experiments to explore these questions.  As such, in an inquiry lab, students are acting like “real scientists.”  Though I do have some knowledge of inquiry labs from my pre-service teacher training at the College of William and Mary, I’d like to learn about how to implement inquiry labs that are specific to a pre-AP or AP biology classroom.  To this end, I am interested in attending a face-to-face AP biology inquiry lab training offered through the College Board.  A face-to-face training will actually allow me to try the inquiry labs I plan to implement in my classroom and the tools to develop my own inquiry labs.

 

Having learned a great deal about the value of digital tools in the K12 classroom in my master’s program, I am interested in exploring some specific digital tools to use in my classroom.  For example, I feel that Google offers a suite of tools that can facilitate digital collaboration among students and help teachers provide meaningful, actionable feedback to students.  Some of these tools include Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Forms, Google Calendar, Google Sites, and Google Classroom.  While I have some experience using most of these programs for personal use (with the exception of Google Classroom), I do not know how to seamlessly integrate these tools effectively into my curriculum.  I plan to use the Google for Education Training Center resources to learn more about how to use these tools in my classroom.  This training center offers an online Fundamentals Training program and an Advanced Training program, each broken down into several sessions.  I am excited to explore these programs and hope to write a grant to purchase tablets or Chromebooks for my classroom so that Google tools will be more accessible for my students.

 

Overall, I plan to focus on these three areas--PBL, inquiry labs, and Google Apps for Education--in my future professional development.  I feel that these techniques and tools could help my students to develop critical thinking skills, learn to plan and conduct their own authentic science experiments, collaborate effectively with other students, and act upon feedback to improve their performance.  By engaging in ongoing learning myself, I can craft a more meaningful classroom experience for my students.