An eLab-book? Can we fix it?

So far, my limited blogging has been somewhat reflective in nature, as a blog should be. However, this is a mix of reflection and a call for help or ideas. Let me explain what is my current situation and what I have used so far to achieve my goals.

 

My current classroom / technology side:

I have been one of the Guinea Pigs at our school piloting using iPads. This is year three in which I have had a class cart of iPads in the room. This year our district started phasing in 1:1 iPads. There are several grade levels which will be getting iPads each year. 9th graders received them at the high school level and all incoming 9th graders from this point on will receive a new iPad, either as their first iPad or if they already had one they will get an updated iPad. I teach biology classes which are 85% sophomores and 15% accelerated freshman. Most of my technology integration is using Google products, such as Classroom, Docs, Forms, Sheets, Slides and I have started playing around with creating a Google site.  I also flip my classes and use Edpuzzle as the medium to present the videos.  (If you flip and haven’t heard about Edpuzzle – check it out, its very cool, but that is for another blog post).

 

My current classroom / science pedagogy side:

The idea of ditching the “Sage on the Stage” and becoming a “Guide on the Side” pretty much sums up my science teaching pedagogy beliefs. I pull from a variety of sources to guide my teaching including Kristen Dotti of Catalyst Learning Curricula, UB Case Study Collection, POGIL, Science Take-Out, and recently I have invested some time learning Argument Driven Inquiry by Victor Sampson (et al.).  All of these are inquiry-driven in nature and/or collaborative in nature.  I use the Learning Pyramid as my guide to instruction.

 

My goal:

So now that you have a little background, here is where I would like to go.  I would like to create an interactive e-lab book.  There would be text, pictures, and video for the students to view while they work the assignment, but they wouldn’t simply write their answers or complete lab sections on paper as before, it would be all on their iPad.  I would like to have them answer questions that would be automatically graded (ie Flubaroo), but there would be areas where they are completing longer answers like Google Classroom and also other times where they would need to take photos or video or make a sketch, again all on their iPad.  So there are parts where I see Google Docs linked to Google Classroom but other parts I see Google Forms being used.  I almost would like to use a hybrid of the two.  Then there are other parts where Notability would work …

So in a sense a working lab/activity document that has …

1. Teacher created instructions in the form of Video, Text and Pictures

2. Student answered MC questions, free response questions

3. Student created drawings, photos, video (or more)

 

As I watched my two boys play and watch Bob the Builder, I wondered …Does anyone know how?  Can we fix it? (Yes we can?)