10 Reasons to Use WISE as a Science Teacher

The Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) is an inquiry learning environment that encourages student exploration in scientific investigations.  WISE is the product of over 20 years of international research and has an ever-expanding community of students, teachers, researchers, and software developers across the world.  If you are unfamiliar with WISE, here are 10 reasons you should consider using it as a science teacher!

1. Inquiry-based learning. WISE units engage students in the methods of real scientists. Through various activities and scaffolding tools, students collaborate to explore issues of social importance; they pose relevant questions and make predictions; they experiment with computational models; they work to evaluate and distinguish discrepant information; and they construct evidence-based explanations through reflection and discussion.  
2. Free and open source. WISE subsists on generous support from the National Science Foundation, which means it is available for anyone with a computer and internet connection to use.
3. A growing library of classroom-tested units. The WISE library offers a collection of units that address key conceptual difficulties students encounter in biology, chemistry, earth sciences, and physics. These units are designed to supplement teachers’ core curricular scope and sequence, and each has been iteratively refined through classroom-based research, and demonstrated improvements in students’ understanding. So whether teachers decide to use all the units or just one, WISE's library offers a rich and reliable resource that is being continually expanded and improved with modern and up-to-date technologies.
4. Standards-based science. WISE library units have been carefully crafted to fulfill core US national standards in reading, writing, math, and science at the middle and high school levels. What is more is that units can be easily adapted to address local standards. Units take a multidisciplinary approach to science so that even as students learn inquiry by interacting with simulations and visualizations, and by interpreting and articulating scientific evidence, they do so through activities that emphasize essential skills in reading, writing, and multimedia literacy.
   
5. Comprehensive instructional support. A WISE teacher account offers a suite of integrated tools for teachers to monitor students’ real-time progress, to facilitate grading and giving feedback, and to automatically score embedded assessments. These tools are continually refined through collaborations with practicing teachers, who understand the real challenges of managing modern classrooms. By facilitating these necessary but time-consuming tasks, teachers are free to focus on what makes them indispensable: Providing quality instruction to individual students.
6. Based on research, refined through practice. Through collaborations with teachers, technology designers, and education researchers, WISE has refined a set of principles, which guide the design of all WISE curriculum materials and tools.  These principles ensure the most effective use of technology, as they are advised by real teacher and student experiences.
7. Powerful learning technologies. WISE researchers collaborate with software design experts to create innovative curriculum-integrated technologies. Interactive visualizations and simulations; applications for drawing, diagramming and animating; and tools for collaborative brainstorming, discussion, and idea management, are each designed to develop in students the inquiry skills important for lifelong learning. Teachers can find them in the existing classroom-tested WISE library units, or they can add and customize their own through the easy-to-use WISE authoring tool.
8. Makes science meaningful. WISE units introduce students to complex science concepts through personally and socially relevant topics. Students determine the structure of detergent molecules by helping to clean the Gulf oil spill; they come to understand mitosis by investigating candidate cures for cancer; and they explore orbital and projectile motion by optimizing a path for deorbiting a space shuttle. Each unit uses a classroom-tested pattern of instruction that values the ideas students bring with them, helps them connect new information to their personal experiences, and integrates their various ideas into a coherent understanding of science.
9. Supports diverse learners. Individual students differ in their experiences, their interests, and their abilities. Some may excel at writing, while others may have a penchant for drawing. Some may speak multiple languages fluently, while others may be learning English as a second or third language. That is why WISE provides a variety of tools, activity patterns, and instructional scaffolds that afford multiple ways for expressing and assessing understanding. That way, no students’ abilities go unrecognized, and all have the chance to succeed.
10. Increases participation in science. WISE gives more teachers and students the opportunity to do inquiry-based science. Units often put students in the roles of scientists, and make difficult concepts accessible both for teachers to teach, and for students to learn. With tools and activities to support inquiry, WISE helps students see themselves as capable of doing science. It allows students to realize that no matter their backgrounds and abilities, science can be a potential future career.

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Don't Say My Name

 

Is it a bad idea to have students call a teacher by their first name?  It is typically the norm in primary (elementary) and secondary (middle/high school) school classrooms for students to call the teacher by Miss or Mister, sometimes alongside their surname.  Why?

The exclusion of a teacher's first name from classroom interactions is often associated with aiding effective classroom management.  The use of titles can be viewed as a simple and benign way to keep visible demarcations between teachers and students (Rosenblum-Lowden, 2000).   There is the risk and fear that students may view teachers on a more personal level if the teacher's first name is used, and in turn, result in behavourial issues that upset the classroom learning environment.  Despite these assertions, classroom management is still 'a murky area of conflicting ideas and vague rules' (Konca & Otugen, 2009, p.7).  The reason for such vagueness is generally equated with the fact that each teacher is unique and has distinct preferences based on their beliefs (Konca & Otugen, 2009; Rosenblum-Lowden, 2000).

One of the most important aspects of classroom management is establishing clear rules and expectations of the students in terms of their behaviour, and consistently enforcing them (Konca & Otugen, 2009).  Such rules and expectations can be teacher or student generated depending on the teacher's approach (Woolfolk-Hoy & Weinstein, 2006).  Through consistency and continuity these rules become part of the classroom routine and can ensure the effectiveness of classroom activities, as students are aware of what is required (Konca & Otugen, 2009).  From these points on classroom management there appears to be little basis for why a teacher should be called Mister or Miss.  Is the use of such titles just a culturally embedded norm of what student and teacher roles should be?

An important aspect of rules and expectations around classroom management is to consider how many are simply 'ritualistic practices to be strictly adhered to' (Widdowson, 1987, p.85) and that may not be necessary.  It is engaging students in interesting learning activities that is the most significant way of avoiding classroom management issues (Kyriacou, 1998).  Widdowson (1987) distinguishes between two types of engagement that he felt need to synchronize for effective classroom practice: interactional and transactional.  An interactional purpose is focused on roles of appropriate behaviour where it is the mode of interaction itself that is meant to have the educational effect, i.e., socializing students into existing school norms.  A transactional purpose is concerned with meeting specific learning objectives, where norms and expectations are pedagogically based and roles are determined based on achieving such objectives.

There is often an incongruence between these two types of engagement where a proposed change in one conflicts with a protocol governing the other.  Interactional engagement is associated with enforcing things such as labels and titles (teacher, student, Sir, etc.) and in many ways goes against the nature of more student centred approaches that focus on transactional engagement.  Having students address the teacher as Mister or Miss may be seen as a necessary interactional engagement, but it could be argued that such a protocol goes against a transactional focus on student initiative and ownership.  Such visible demarcations like the use of titles keeps a control on what students may be willing to do.  For example, Mian (1995) noted that a student teacher found students had enhanced engagement and felt greater respect when they were addressed as Mister or Miss by their teacher, as opposed to only the teacher being addressed in such a way.  It is worth considering the use of titles such as Miss, Mister, etc., in the school context and the effects it has on interactional and transactional engagement and the alignment between them.

The value of titles is worth assessing in the classroom.  To finish, here are some quotes on the use of titles to consider...

• The clouds may drop down titles and estates, and wealth may seek us, but wisdom must be sought. ~Edward Young
    
• I am not interested in medals or titles. I don't need them. I need the love of the public and I fight for it. ~Olga Korbut
   
• People don't follow titles, they follow courage. ~ William Wells Brown
  
• I didn't come into the business to get awards or titles. ~ Julie Walters
   
• Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. ~ Thomas Paine 

Image taken from: Image


References:
-Konca, M. & Otugen, R. (2009). Effective classroom management in relation to classroom routines and rules. In 1st International Symposium on Sustainable Development, June 9-10, 2009, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
-Kyriacou, Chris, (1998). Essential teaching skills (2nd Ed.).
-Mian, T. (1995). Classroom discipline and management perceptions of a TESL student teacher
-Rosenblum-Lowden, R. (2000). You have to go to school... you're the teacher!: 300+ classroom management strategies to make your job easier and more fun. Corwin Press, Inc. A Sage.
-Widdowson, H. (1987). The roles of teacher and learner, ELT Journal, 41(2), 83-8.
-Woolfolk-Hoy, A., & Weinstein, C. (2006). Students' and teachers' perspectives on classroom management. In C. Evertson & C. S. Weinstein (Eds.), Handbook for classroom management: Research, practice, and contemporary issue (pp. 181-220). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.