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Using Blog to make science fun

Posted by Yupei on 2013 年 10 月 5 号 in 在线教育 Online Education, 所有文章 All Articles | 1 comment

（This Article is the content of my presentation for the 2nd ASEAN Plus Three junior Science Odyssey, June 2013 at Korea Science Academy, Pusan, South Korea.）

Hello every one! My name is Duan Yupei. I come from China. Beijing No.4 high school. My topic today is Using Blog to make science fun.

According to the Wikipedia, Blog is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web… In my opinion, blog can share words, pictures, flash, videos and games, etc with anyone who can surf on the internet. If we can use blog properly we can make science more interesting.

Several years ago, I received an interview from a magazine. The journalist called me an unusual teacher. The main reason about it was that he believed that I was different from other teachers . I teach science via blogs after class, besides telling the students about basic science knowledge, I tried to cultivate students scientific spirit. After seven years of researching, I believe blog is an important Information carrier for students, especially for the gifted students in the information age.

I have two information carriers. The first one named the happy garden for junior biology which is established in 2006 when I have just started my job as an biology teacher in Beijing No.4 high school. I posted articles about the required biology curriculum content for the 7^th and 8^th graders.

In 2008, a Chemical teacher, a Physical teacher, a Geography teacher and I joined together to start an integrated science curriculum as one of our school’s elective courses. I made an blog named Science Around Us for this course.

So, how to use blog properly to make science fun?

1. To Enrich Science Class (there are four features about this point)

(1) No limitation on space and time: Everybody knows that the time for every lesson is limited, no matter it is 40 minutes or 50 minutes. If you don’t finish the topic when the bell ring, what should you do? I will finish the topic on my blog.

(2) To have deeper Discussion: there always be some students, especially the most excellent ones in your class, would ask some questions extend from the core knowledge points that you have just taught during the class. The questions just like the sparks of genius but you have to leave it to next class. What will you do? Use blog to keep the sparks shinning.

(3) To sum up the most frequent questions: When I finished teaching junior biology several times I realized that students may ask the similar questions during studying the same chapters. So I checked the questions asked on my blog before teaching a new chapter. It helps me to know what may the student ask and what information the students want to acquire. Besides that, students can prepare new lessons according to skipping logs within the chapter.

(4) To transform the abstract knowledge points into interesting stories: sometimes the abstract knowledge are difficult in the textbooks. I found the interesting stories about the abstract knowledge points are welcome by students. After reading the stories about the abstract knowledge the students can learnt easier.

2. The second point is to play science games

In my spare time, I participated in recording science games in China Central Television many times and I posted the videos on my blog. When gifted students playing the games they may think about the reason and scientific knowledge hidden behind the games. Maybe you would like to have a look. Let’s see.

[Playing Video]

As you see, we played with air in this video. There are many other interesting videos about water, force, material science, etc.

3. The third point is To share the practice

As a science teacher, I organized science trips in the weekends and vacations on schedule. I chose the best talented students in studying science as a team and tried to motivate their interest about science, enjoy the happiness from science , let the students be grittier to do the scientific research. Since the number of the team members for science trips is limited. I would post the photos and records on my blog and share with other students.

Some articles about our science trips written by gifted students are published by different journals and magazines. Whoever read it on my blog will be more passionate about nature and science.

Then, let me show you an example about the power of blog.

When I finished teaching human evolution. I invited students to play a game about human evolution on my blog. It’s a game called Devolve Me created by Open University.

[play the game]

You can upload your photo and adjust it, then you will watch yourself travel back through evolution. Students love the game very much and they opened the web page almost 900 times. From the game students have known about the features of human’s ancestors.

When I taught the evidence of evolution I showed the students a fossil and described the details about the fossil on my blog. I wanted students to use Google to search the information about the fossil. They need to learn how to deal with scientific questions with the help of searching engines.

Eventually, I have received replies from many students. They knew the fossil was an animal belong to Brachiopods once lived 400 million years ago.

Some of the gifted students even search other fossils saved at their own home. He Zijia and XIong Anda took photos of the fossils they owned .

Tere are three dimensions in American Next Generation Science Standards: Practices, Crosscutting concepts and Disciplinary core ideas. I believe that if we can use blog effectively, the goals for Next Generation Science Standards will be easier achieved.
My first students have started to study in colleges. Some of them prefer to study science in colleges. Many of them still discuss what they noticed from TV or newspapers with me. Several students still sent me photos they took about science all around the world. I shared them on the blogs and now I show some of them to you. The students asked me how the plants grow on the surfaces of this car; they asked me why shouldn’t we fed the squirrels in the wild; they asked me why the whales always jump out of the sea; they asked me what tomorrow will be like if the iceberg disappear…

There are a lot of questions asked by students I can’t answer so well. That’s even another interesting aspect by using blog. No one can answer all the questions. What should we do is not to let students know all the answers but should keep their passion about science.

We should use blog to provide them interesting materials but not task or tests. Just like an old idiom says in China,授人以鱼不如授人以鱼，as is that given a fish, one can eat for a day; taught to fish, one can eat for a lifetime.

We should first use blog to make science fun, then we may have lifelong learners for science.

Thank you!