Monday January 17 - Resource #3

 Herro, D., & Quigley, C. (2016). Innovating with steam in middle school classrooms: Remixing     education. On the Horizon, 24(3), 190–204. https://doi.org/10.1108/oth-03-2016-0008

A lot of the sources that are available on the web are for elementary school teachers, additionally last semester I tried to focus my inquiry on the upper-year Physics 11 and 12 courses so I wanted to find a source that could better represent applications to a grade 9 classroom as this is related to my new question. This article looks at middle school classrooms and investigates how STEAM integration has been successful and unsuccessful. From the reading I gathered a number of useful ‘tips’ for moving forward with my inquiry:

• 1.      “it became clear that incorporating the “A” in STEAM required increased involvement by arts and humanities educators, in both professional development and classroom settings” – need to collaborate with educators from the subjects we want to integrate.
• 2.      the amount of time to create an authentic unit that involved science, math, ELA, social studies, arts and technology was inordinate and likely impossible without administrative support – planning time became a huge constraint

Thursday January 13 - Resource #2

Herro, D., Quigley, C., Andrews, J., & Delacruz, G. (2017). Co-measure: Developing an assessment for student collaboration in STEAM activities. International Journal of STEM Education, 4(1), 1-12. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40594-017-0094-z

As I prepare to develop a STEAM integrated unit for my Physics 9 class, one topic which still eludes me is assessment. From my assessment course I know that I need to be assessing students’ competencies as they work through the unit. In building a magic show it seems fitting to assess competencies related to communication, collaboration, and related areas. The core competencies for the unit focus largely on communication, and collaboration goals. For me, assessing collaboration is totally new. The goal of this article is to develop a rubric, “to assess student collaboration, at the individual level, when students are working in K-12 STEAM activities.” The article looks at how this assessment can be valid, and reliable. The article also provides information regarding what attributes of collaboration can be assessed for example, “Negotiates roles within group.” Finally, the article gives specific applications of rubric attributes to STEAM activities. I think that this article will be useful in considering the criteria for assessment that I would like to include on assignment rubrics in my transformed unit.

Monday January 10 - Resource #1

 Gerofsky, S. (2007). “because you can make things with it”: A rationale for a project to teach mathematics as a multimodal design tool in Secondary Education. Journal of Teaching and Learning, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.22329/jtl.v5i1.126

  This article discusses the ways that mathematics education can be contextualized for students. In the article, there is a discussion of the importance, in math education, of making learning immersive and hands-on. It discusses how math can sometimes feel disembodied or disconnected from the lives and interests of students. I feel that this sentiment can be transferred to physics education. This is related to my inquiry because I am purposing a fully immersive experience for students to relate physics to something they might find interesting, hands-on, and relatable (a magic show). The reason I chose this article is that I am connecting with the author about my topic and before I draft questions for her, I would like to fully understand her area of specialization in order to prompt these questions.