Brian Desrochers
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About Me
My name is Brian Desrochers and I am a certified Biology teacher for grades 7-12. I graduated from The College of Saint Rose with a degree in Biology Adolescent Education in 2013. Since graduating, I have taught at a public school for parts of two years before working at a charter school for two and a half years. I am currently taking a break from teaching to focus on completing my degree in the CDIT program at UAlbany. I am working as a pharmacy technician part time while working on my degree full time. I have an interest and passion for using media and technology in the classroom as a way to engage students, and help them make meaningful connections to the material being presented in the classroom.
My Topic and Purpose
My course is designed to help improve science instruction by helping educators find ways to help students read, use, interpret, and produce scientific data-intensive media. Data related media, such as graphs, charts, and visualizations, are extremely important for students to understand, especially as education moves more towards a student-centered approach of learning. My goal is to give educators strategies to help students interpret scientific media, and ways for them to produce it to help increase student understanding and develop critical thinking skills. Doing this will also help educators reach higher order thinking skills on Bloom's taxonomy. As education starts to identify that each course has specific literacies that are crucial to them, I believe that to be literate in science you must be able to read, use, interpret, and produce scientific data-intensive media.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course students will be able to:
- Identify important types of data-intensive media
- Explain tactics to incorporate data-intensive media in lessons.
- Understand how to help students interpret/analyze data-intensive media.
- Create assignments based around analyzing and producing data-intensive media.
Needs Assessment
Problem:
Far too often in science classes students fail to see the connection between scientific concepts and their relevance in the world. There is significant research that shows when students can make a connection to topics being learned, they are far more likely to form a real understanding of the topic. Understanding goes beyond being able to state scientific facts, it means that you can analyze, perform, create, and form opinions based on scientific data. In science, students come in with a wide variety of beliefs on various topics because of their prior knowledge, environment, and experiences. Media literacy can allow students to view scientific data, and other documents relating to science, through a critical lens. It also helps educators to teach critical thinking skills while still teaching content.
One way educators can encourage collaboration and connect concepts to students' lives is by teaching students to deconstruct media documents that relate to a topic. Students need to understand that scientific data can be interpreted in multiple ways depending on how it is presented. These different interpretations are what lead to differing opinions in the scientific community. Doing this will help produce critical thinkers whose argumentation is founded in research and facts.
What is to be learned
Learners will be informed on how to appropriately deconstruct media documents in a way that does not influence the students opinions and beliefs. Learners will be introduced to questioning techniques that can neutrally present a scientific issue or topic, and help students see connections to other aspects of society. Learners will be able to select appropriate media documents that are open to interpretation or oppose each other but are founded in scientific research. At the end learners will be able to create assignments that create cognitive dissonance for students and help them critically think about issues in science.
The Learners
The learners this course would be most beneficial too are science teachers in grades 6-12, or pre-service teachers. This course could be used by any professional in the science field who wants to learn how to use media documents to get students to question their beliefs and think more critically.
Instruction Context
This instruction will take place in an online environment, so students of this course would need computer access and internet connection. The resources in this course will include, videos, documents/readings, and lectures. Participants will be required to apply what they have learned in the course through a series of assessments that ask them to apply the concepts to specific scenarios.
Exploring the Problem and Solution
Participants of this course will explore why media documents are a good way to connect with students' experiences and beliefs. Learners will be shown the importance of analyzing media documents in a neutral way that does not lead the students to one particular belief, but instead leads to discussion and inquiry about the topic.
Goals
The main goal of this course is for science teachers to find new ways to present material that utilize media documents and literacy. In science, creating cognitive dissonance is the best way for students to explore science and change their thinking. Unfortunately projects and experiments cannot be done all of the time because of high stakes testing. This course will give educators a different way besides lectures to engage students, and create cognitive dissonance that leads to learning science.
Analysis of the Learner and Context
Performance-Based Objectives
Define course-level target objectives
Task Analysis
Elaborate and analyze the objectives to identify more specific enabling and supporting objectives.
Curriculum Map
Map out the sequence of learning units and activities to achieve the defined objectives.
