Bringing Math and Science to Life With Blended Learning

Getting students excited about math and science can be a challenge. The “I’m never going to use this” attitude that some students display puts a real damper on their enthusiasm to learn.

However, with the right tools and a little creativity, it is possible to create a better sense of relevance and even spark enthusiasm to learn these sometimes difficult subjects.

What is the right tool to get students engaged in math and science? In my experience, it’s online discussions. Why? Online discussions give every student a voice and allows them to go beyond simply consuming educational content to actually creating it from their own perspective – a great way to create relevance.

What do you need?

First, you need a good online discussion environment – A free online learning platform like Collaborize Classroom is a great option because you can track student participation, use multiple topic types and, of course, it’s free.

Next, you need to set up clear guidelines and student expectations. Here is a great collection of resources to help you with that - Blended Learning Resources

Now comes the fun part – creating discussion topics that build relevance and interest. Writing a great topic is easy if you follow a few simple guidelines.

1. Good titles lead to good discussions.
2. Embedding multimedia makes topics more interesting and improves learning.
3. Clear guidelines for student collaboration are essential.

I’ve picked out some example topics from the Collaborize Classroom Topic Library to help get you started.

• Chemistry Lesson Plan
• Physics Lesson Plan
• Statistics and Probability Lesson Plan
• Correlation and Causation Lesson Plan

Each of these questions includes clear instructions to guide students in the process of collaborating. Consistently facilitating collaboration with your topics will help foster a community of inquiry among your students, a very powerful way to drive engagement and relevance. Here are a couple examples of instructions that you can use to drive collaboration when creating your own topics.

1. Once you have posted your response, read the responses posted by your peers and reply thoughtfully to at least 2 other students. Compliment strong points, ask questions and build on ideas shared!
2. Post your response, then read the responses posted by your peers. Vote for the one that you felt was particularly thoughtful or insightful. Thoughtfully reply to the student for which you voted.

For more guidance on creating great topics, check out Free Resources for Teachers: The Art Of Asking Questions.

If you want kick it up a notch by including video content in your topics, here are some great resources to check out.

For Math:

• Vi Hart: Math Resources
• Singing Bananas: Math Videos

For Science:

• James Tanton: Thinking Mathematics
• Brainiac: Science Videos
• Discovery Education’s Myth Busters

Once your students have been given the opportunity to engage and collaborate on a topic, the last step will be to tie it all back into the learning that takes place in the classroom.  Take a look through your students’ posts and comments and pick out strong examples of good critical thinking and effective collaboration. Bring the examples into class for a wrap-up discussion the next day. If you do this consistently, you will have shown your students that their voices and ideas play a key role in their education. You will have given them the power to create real life connections and relevance for the subjects that you teach, much more effectively than any textbook ever could.

If you’ve never tried online discussions with your students, I suggest you give it a try. It’s easy to get started and it can be a very rewarding experience for both teachers and students.

In my next post, I’ll be going over the upcoming Common Core State Standards to dispel some common misconceptions, and to take a look at how to implement these new standards with blended learning.