Science In The News

When it comes to traveling through time it is always interesting to go back and see how much has changed throughout the years. In class we were assigned a project to create a Glogster that has information and different articles that talk about the current topics regarding space and articles that also speak about certain inventions that were created back in the day that relate to space and how we are able to continue to explore it and see it in different ways today.

            After working with one another in our groups we created a Word Cloud that consisted of important words that stood out to us throughout reading our articles that we have chose.  Using word cloud allows you to introduce to your students certain words that they may be reading throughout the work that has been assigned and helps them become familiar with certain words and their meanings. In our group we decided to make our word cloud that shape of earth. Word Cloud allows you to pick and create different types of designs, one group designed a rocket ship world cloud which was clever being that we are talking about space! It is a really engaging way to get students interested and discussing which words they may or may not be familiar with. Using a word cloud is a good way to see which words your students are familiar with and which words they may not know or have trouble understanding. By seeing which words students are familiar with you assess prior knowledge to the words and the topic they may relate with. Using world cloud is a very helpful strategy when you are introducing a topic and trying to familiarize your students with the content beforehand.

            After having a word cloud created we worked in a group of four to create a Timeline based off of the articles we have found that discuss discoveries in space. Our time line was not just a regular time line. We used a website called Tiki Toki to make our timeline a little more interesting and engaging.  When we first began to create our timeline we had a few difficulties figuring out how this program actually worked, but once we made our own discoveries on it we were able to create a timeline with events that have occurred from the 1600’s on.  While using this website we were able to be creative by adding backgrounds and links. Tiki Toki would be very helpful while working with students in the classroom and allowing them to create timelines based on the information they are learning about. It will be a good way to work with one another and it could also be a way to study information throughout the timeline year by year in remembering important events that may have occurred.

            Throughout this assignment the science issue of astronomy is involved. There are many articles that regard astronomy and information from the 1600’s on. The articles that we chose and the topics we chose in our timeline are topics that stood out the most while discussing astronomy. We were able to choose topics for our timeline based off of the articles we each put into our glogsters and the topics that came up most often.  All of these articles informed us with a lot of information on astronomy. This current topic relates to the course because we have currently been speaking out space and galaxies and astronomy fits into these categories. These news articles were full of important information regarding all different types of space discoveries and important information we can teach children such as the invention of the telescope and what we have been able to do ever since then. These articles are great for students to read and obtain information from. These projects were very helpful.