Mr. Garry Joseph, a middle school science teacher in Los Angeles Unified School District in California, began using Gizmos this year through the Gizmos Science Success Grant. This year “participating schools and teachers are having a wonderful experience pushing the boundaries of scientific inquiry.”
He says, “It’s been fun to experiment with Gizmos this year and involve students in the meta cognitive process, asking ‘what do you prefer, lecture/reading/lab and writing, or a short vocabulary lesson, simulations and data analysis?’ The answer is variety – a little of everything and not too much of just one thing.” He finds that when his students, “go through the structured activities provided with each Gizmo, they feel smarter and more confident about the topic they studied.”
Mr. Joseph has used Gizmos in his classroom in many different ways. “The most effective way has been with each student on a device and with a paper guide to the Gizmo in their hand. Then a student can come to the SmartBoard and do a demo for their friends. Using just a projector, I pass a cordless mouse around the room to build excitement and interactivity.”
He has used Food Chain, Digestive System and Cannonball Clowns (Number Line Estimation) Gizmos, but has found some of the advanced Gizmos good for his students as well. “The Human Evolution – Skull Analysis Gizmo worked really well in my evolution unit, and we could connect structure and function in our inquiries. I happened to borrow some different skull replicas models from our science materials center, and having the physical models around the room made the Gizmo even more interesting.”
Mr. Joseph and his students have also used Gizmos for their science fair projects. “Science fair is a tradition we are trying to reimagine for the changing times. We aim to make it more inclusive – not just for the students who love science already. We plan to make it interactive and entertaining. My idea was to have students armed with iPads and computers present a favorite Gizmo to the visiting public and show off their learning, ideally letting a guest try a Gizmo or two for themselves.” His class shot a short video at their science fair earlier this year. You can see his students showing off a Gizmo at 2:58 in the video.
He adds, “For next year we want to use Gizmos even more in our science fair by having students do more direct teaching during the event and allowing students to actually do a modified science fair project by completing an original inquiry using a Gizmo. That would be cool!”
Working with Gizmos this year has been a positive experience for both teachers and students in Los Angeles. “Teachers deserve a tool like Gizmos to empower students to conduct their own investigations, learn without reading lots of text but by doing lots of reasoning.”
Garry Joseph has taught 6th and 7th grade science for 11 years. His undergraduate degree is from UCLA and his Master’s degree is from CSUN. He teaches at a Performing Arts Magnet School in Los Angeles Unified School District. He is currently working toward his National Boards in Science and is a grant recipient of a Fulbright Distinguished Teacher Award. Next year he will travel to India to work on a science fair project.