10 great websites for HD science videos

When my school recently installed new HD interactive touch screens, I realised that I was going to have to change a few things. David Attenborough has produced some amazing natural history programmes. However, a poor quality, pixelated clip of him, along with some flowers blooming in the desert following a brief period of rain, uploaded by the BBC to YouTube several years ago, was no longer going to cut it on these HD screens! 

Via Pixabay

I therefore decided to go through my bookmarked websites to consolidate those with high quality biology videos and animations, as well as look for new sites with good quality, HD content. It was also important to me that these sites were uploading their content specifically for educational purposes. I don't want illegally uploaded clips that may be taken down at any point by their copyright owner. Although fair use of copyright material generally allows use for educational purposes, I feel it is better to avoid potential issues by using material where permission has been explicitly given. This also helps to model good digital citizenship for students. 

So, in no particular order, here is a curated list of excellent video or animation resources, along with a brief description of what each site offers. They are mostly life sciences-oriented, although some are more general science websites. 

Your Genome 

Excellent, high quality animations covering various molecular biology topics, including DNA replication, protein synthesis, and the molecular basis for cancer. It also has short videos with interviews with practising scientists, plus some great hands-on activities.

HHMI BioInteractive

A multitude of resources on a wide range of life science topics. I have found the ecology videos and activities relating to Gorongosa National Park, in Mozambique, particularly helpful and engaging. There are also very useful evolution and natural selection resources, for example the activities based on real data from rock pocket mouse populations and their adaptations.  

Big Picture 

This site also has a variety of life science resources, including videos, animations, and activities. The videos and animations are of a very high quality, for example this animation about the sliding filament theory of muscle contraction. There is a particular focus on making links between cutting-edge science and the wider implications for society as a whole. 

Stated Clearly

A website with high quality animations by Jon Perry, focused mainly on giving clear explanations on various aspects of evolutionary theory, natural selection, and genetics, for example this one about how cooperation between species evolved. My students also really enjoyed the animated RNA molecules in this video about the RNA World Hypothesis! 

Deep Look

Punchy, extremely high quality HD videos on various different biology topics. I particularly like the mosquito biting video, which I have used to introduce the topic of mosquito-borne disease. The hummingbird's flight in slow motion is very useful for engaging students on the topic of animal movement, while this video looks at squirrel behaviour. 

Amoeba Sisters

Lots of fun, high quality animations covering all of the key biology topics. These videos would be great for flipped classrooms. They could also be used to introduce topics, or for review at the end of a topic. 

It's Okay To Be Smart

A wide range of science videos, including biology, grouped by subject. For my students, who are all Thai and therefore English language learners, the speed at which the presenter speaks could pose a challenge - fortunately, the videos have closed caption subtitles which can be switched on if necessary. 

StemBox

This YouTube channel has videos based around practical STEM activities aimed specifically at making STEM more accessible to girls aged 7-13 years. There are lots of good ideas here that could be used for introductory science labs for younger kids, or at summer camps etc. 

Draw Curiosity

This YouTube channel by Ines Laura Dawson features an eclectic mix of videos on a range of science topics, such as why two sexes evolved, and how to build a cyborg beetle. Ines also has a Draw Curiosity website with more videos and blog posts.  

Frank Gregorio

A range of videos set to uplifting, awe-inspiring music by Frank Gregorio. I use the Introduction to Biology video as an attention grabber when I see my new class of Grade 10 students for the first time at the start of our three years studying biology together, and it always prompts a round of applause! 

Bonus tip! Don't want YouTube comments below a video you want your students to watch? Use ViewPure to remove comments and other distractions from YouTube videos!

I hope this list of websites is useful. It would be great to hear suggestions about other, similar websites that I've not included!

Taking science projects beyond the laboratory

At my school, Grade 11 students in the maths-science programme are required to work in small groups to undertake year-long science projects. Often these projects are laboratory-based, experimental-type projects, which are obviously important since science is a very practical subject. However, as the coordinator of these projects, I am also keen for students to engage in other types of projects that may not be quite so lab-based. This year provided a good example of how much learning may be achieved via a project that was not a lab-based experiment. 

The group prepares for their project presentation.

The group in question came to see me at the beginning of the year to ask me if they could do a project based around the Ebola and MERS viruses, both of which were very much in the news at the time. Obviously, this would not make for a suitable lab-based project for high school students! However, I was keen to let them pursue the topic of their choosing, and spent some time thinking of a way for them to undertake a suitable project. I then proposed to the students that they should carry out the following:

• Background research into the aetiology and epidemiology of Ebola and MERS viruses
• Develop a questionnaire to investigate the knowledge, awareness, and attitudes around these diseases
• Undertake a pilot study to test their questionnaire
• Revise their questionnaire based on the findings of the pilot study
• Carry out a larger survey of other students, as well as members of the general public
• Develop a website, based on their research, in order to publicise their findings and raise awareness, as well as providing them with a tangible product at the end of their project

Overall I was extremely pleased with the students' effort and attention to detail during this project. They worked hard on it throughout the school year, and consulted with me regularly for advice. I was pleasantly surprised when I asked them how many individuals they planned to interview for their main survey, and they told me 300 people. In the end they actually interviewed over 500 people, an impressive undertaking!

At the beginning of the project, when I suggested that they design a website to display their results, the group was initially sceptical since none of them had any web design experience. However, they took the plunge and, using Google Sites, created a very nice website which can be found here. 

A screenshot from the students' website.

Towards the end of their project, the group was very happy to be selected to display their work for a visit by the Royal School Award committee. To top things off, following the end of year project presentations their group was declared joint winners! 

The group's display for the Royal School Award visitors.

My feeling is that this project was a great success and has reinforced my view that science projects need not be lab-based in order to provide students with a valuable science learning experience. Additionally, the students themselves gave very positive feedback regarding the project. I would be happy to supervise similar projects in the future. 

Three reasons behind common misconceptions in biology

Recently I saw a link to an interesting news article about biology students' misconceptions of the subject. When I read the article I noticed that many of the misconceptions identified chimed with observations I have made of my own students' misconceptions. Intrigued, I downloaded the original research article on which the news item was based, which can be found here. The authors identify three common underlying causes, or cognitive construals, for these misconceptions, each of which I will look at in turn.

Rafflesia, a parasitic plant (Photo credit: Dick Culbert)

1. Teleological thinking

The first common underlying cause of misconceptions, teleological thinking, refers to our need for causal stories behind the observation of phenomena, based on the assumption of goals, purposes, or functions. An example of this underlies one of the most common misconceptions I come across from students when teaching evolution. Here is a sentence I might commonly see from a student who is explaining the evolution of the body form of dolphins:

'The ancestor of dolphins walked on land but lived near water. Eventually dolphins adapted themselves so they could swim in the water'. 

Here, the student is assuming a purposeful effort from a dolphin ancestor to change itself into a form more suited to a life aquatic. Clearly this represents a fundamental misconception of natural variation, natural selection, and changes in the makeup of a population over time. Individual organisms cannot 'adapt themselves' to their environment. Natural variation in a population means that some individuals may be better suited to their environment and are therefore more likely to survive and reproduce. The traits that make them more fit for their environment therefore become more prevalent in the population. 

This is a tricky concept for native speakers to express correctly, and would seem to be linked to the underlying teleological misconception that evolution is a purposeful process. For my students, who are ELLs, they have to cope with both the difficulty of the concept and the use of language to correctly express it. Knowing the nature of this misconception, however, will enable me to help learners address these issues when they encounter them in the future. 

2. Essentialist thinking

The second type of misconceptions are related to essentialist thinking - a set of assumptions an individual may make about concepts, such as the idea that a particular feature of a system is solely responsible for defining its overall identity. In biology, an example of this would be the misconception that all plants are photosynthetic. Rafflesia, the plant which produces the largest flower in the world, is parasitic and does not make carbohydrates through photosynthesis. In fact, in biology there is frequently an exception to every 'rule'. Thus we need to help move students' understanding away from the idea that systems or processes need not be defined by a particular characteristic most of them share. 

3. Anthropocentric thinking

The third misconception occurs when biological phenomena are viewed through an anthropocentric, or human-centred lens. A common anthropocentric misconception which I have been battling for a long time now, and remember being used as an example of science undergraduates' misconceptions during my MAEd, is that plants take in food from soil via their roots. This misconception can be addressed simply by asking students if this were the case, why then are there not enormous holes in the ground at the base of every tree on the school grounds? However, knowing that the underlying, anthropocentric reason for this misconception - that all organisms, including plants, must 'eat' food in a similar way to humans - is helpful, and provides a means for approaching similar anthropocentric misconceptions. 

Summary

The insights afforded by understanding the underlying causes of common misconceptions among biology students are both interesting and helpful. Interesting, in that these misconceptions would appear to be widespread, irrespective of culture or language (although there may of course be some communities where they may not be present. Helpful, in that by understanding the underlying causes of these misconceptions, it can provide biology teachers with a means with which to address them. In turn, once learners become more aware of these causes, they too may be able to spot them more easily and avoid falling into these common traps. 

I would love to hear others' experiences of common misconceptions and ways of dealing with them. 

The old and the new

In a couple of my classes this week I was fortunate enough to be able to combine some traditional approaches to teaching and learning biology, whilst utilising technology that would have been virtually unthinkable a few years ago.

Case study 1 - Modelling mitosis

Mitosis is a classic case of a biological concept that can seem very abstract to learners. Many textbooks and websites describe various different approaches for practical classes that involve modelling mitosis in order to make it something more concrete for students to grasp, for example using pipe cleaners, pop beads or modelling clay. I opted to use modelling clay - pipe cleaners were probably a lot easier to source in the past than they are these days! This was the traditional part of the class.

However, I also wanted to add something a bit more engaging to the practical, so I decided to have my students create stop-motion movies. This was the part of the class that would have been much more difficult to achieve in the past, without a fair amount of expensive and specialised kit. Now, since all of my students have smartphones, they simply downloaded a free stop motion app to their phone and away they went. Most of them chose to use a free app called Stop Motion Studio. There is an example of their work here. 

So, in the space of a double lab class, I had given brief notes on the four phases of mitosis, had my students make their model chromosomes, and also had them create a stop motion movie to generate a tangible, final finished product. Most of them also had time to make movies showing cytokinesis, illustrating the difference between this process in plant versus animal cells. 

Case study 2 - Ecological sampling techniques

The second activity was a practical activity that took us outside of the classroom, something I discussed in my last post. I do enjoy getting out of the classroom with my learners, although the conditions weren't ideal on this particular occasion - the temperature was 34° Celsius and, because it had recently rained, the humidity was around 85%!

For this practical activity learners had an opportunity to try out some classic ecological sampling techniques using quadrats. Again, this is a very traditional method used in biology that has long been a feature of high school biology classes.

The new aspects I was able to incorporate were two-fold in this case. First, students were able to take photos of their quadrats, and the plants they could count within them. These will be useful for a future activity looking at urban biodiversity. Secondly, once we got back to class, the data they had collected were entered into spreadsheets and quickly converted into tables and graphs for analysis. 

In general, my feeling is that there are often traditional approaches to pedagogy that are popular and appear frequently in textbooks, websites etc for a reason - they are effective. In these cases, it is worth keeping them. I would also not advocate using technology for the sake of it, however, in the two cases I have outlined above, I feel that technology clearly has a valuable role to play in augmenting the learning opportunities that are available. 

I would be interested to hear of other examples where old and new techniques are being used to create new and interesting learning opportunities, please feel free to comment below.

Reflections on teaching and learning during an urban biodiversity project

This semester my Grade 10 students conducted projects which contained a number of elements considered to be important for project based learning (PBL). In this post I will describe the various activities carried out by learners as part of these projects, along with reflections on how I implemented each activity. This will be followed by a summary of learners' own reflections on the projects. 

A screenshot of the front page created by students.

1. Driving question

The driving question for these projects was 'What biodiversity can we find around us, when we live in a large urban centre like Bangkok?' On reflection, next time I would spend longer having students developing their own driving questions related to the theme of urban biodiversity. In this way learners would have more voice and choice over the direction their project took. 

2. Opening event

Groups of students were asked to take photos of various wildlife that they spotted around Bangkok. Back in class the following week, I asked learners to upload their photos to the biodiversity monitoring website Project Noah. I have blogged previously about how Project Noah is a great way to introduce learners to citizen science. This was the opening event for these projects, and aimed to give learners a sense of how their own photos and observations may be used to inform real-world science. 

An example of Bangkok's biodiversity.

3. Creating authentic products

In order for learners to exercise some creativity, and make good use of the photos they had taken, I asked for each group to create a web page for their photos within Google Sites. This was also where students were able to reinforce what we had been learning in class about scientific naming and classification of organisms, habitats, and community interactions. 

Additionally, I asked each group of students to create a video based on their observations and photos. They had a choice of approaches here: a series of their photos put together as a movie, a filmed piece to camera, a video with a voiceover etc. These videos were then posted to YouTube (for example here), and so represent an authentic, public product.

5. Learners' reflections

At the end of the project I wanted students to have the opportunity to reflect on their learning throughout the projects. This would also act as feedback for me, affording me insights into what could be improved about the projects in future. These reflections were recorded by having students complete a questionnaire created using a Google Form.

All but one student (27/28) completed the reflections questionnaire. 25/27 students responded that they had learned something new about biodiversity in Bangkok. Many students expressed surprise at the range of biodiversity they discovered in and around Bangkok. 

A number of students expressed the opinion that going out finding wildlife of which to take photos of was fun, not boring, and in the words of one student '(felt) free, not like doing work'. Some students enjoyed making the videos, while others stated that they enjoyed putting their web pages together. 

When asked what was the most important thing they learned from the projects, many students noted that they had learned a lot about biodiversity and the relationships between living things. Other students highlighted team working skills as an important aspect they had learned from the projects. Some students talked about specific technical skills they had learned, such as building web pages and editing videos. 

When asked what they would change about the project, many learners responded that they wouldn't change anything. A few students suggested that there may be better options than Google Sites for building the web pages, since it is somewhat limited in the choices available. A couple of students also noted technical difficulties when it came to making the videos. 

Summary

My own personal feeling about these projects is that they were successful in many respects, most importantly that the majority of students felt that they had learned something new from them. I think next time I would spend longer in the driving question development phase, giving students more opportunity to have their input. Also, I would consider ways to give learners more say in the choice of what their final product should be. I still like the idea of having a website so that the whole group can collate their work in one place, but within that there could be a wider range of ways to display their findings. 

I would be interested to hear other views on these projects, along with suggestions for improving them. 

What should a teacher do if they don't like parts of their curriculum?

This post was originally inspired by an email conversation with @GuardianTeach earlier this week, about a high school English teacher who said she no longer wanted to teach Shakespeare because she felt it wasn't relevant to her students. Also, she happened personally not to like Shakespeare. I found this latter point more disturbing; considering what is or isn't relevant for our learners is one thing, but picking and choosing curriculum based on our personal preferences is quite another. The teacher's original comments can be found on the Washington Post's The Answer Sheet blog here. There is a response by the blog's editor here, which I find myself more in agreement with. 

Any teacher will naturally have some sections of their curriculum that they prefer over others. They will also have opinions as to which aspects of their curriculum are more relevant, and those that are less relevant to learners' lives. These opinions, however, may be based on assumptions about learners which turn out to be incorrect. There are also different preferences among learners from year to year. 

As a biology teacher my curriculum encompasses a wide range of topics. Do I like them all equally? No. Do I feel that they are equally relevant to all of my students? No. For example, the thorny issue of teaching botany. (Who said plants aren't fun!) I personally find plants fascinating, but in my experience many learners don't see plants as being particularly relevant to their daily lives. This is not helped by a curriculum which demands a detailed knowledge of the intricate aspects of the reproductive strategies of the four major plant groups (non-vascular, seedless vascular, gymnosperms, and angiosperms). Then there are the pages and pages of dry details about each of the various plant phyla. In a pre-Google world maybe it was worth memorising these discrete facts - it isn't anymore. These sections of the course could usefully be done away with. Fundamental processes on the other hand, such as photosynthesis and transpiration, play an important role in cultivating an understanding of how the natural world operates, and these should remain as part of a high school biology course. 

Many educators will agree that curricula around the world are in need of, or are already undergoing, change to make them more relevant to the current generation of learners. This is clearly a step in the right direction. I would happily see several chunks removed from my curriculum, even those sections that I prefer, if it would give more time and space to what was really useful and relevant to today's learners. However, I don't think that can necessarily be achieved simply by jettisoning what we ourselves happen not to like.  

It is up to us as educators to try to find ways to make a topic relevant. This could be by extending learner voice and choice, or by tackling current issues such as genetically modified crops. What this does not mean, though, is that we should be simply dropping those topics we don't like from the curriculum, using as a smokescreen the argument that they are not relevant for our learners. 

Creating virtual field trips

 Field trips are a fantastic way to engage students and enhance learning. Sometimes, however, field trips may not be possible for a variety of reasons, for example financial, geographical, or safety reasons. In these cases a great substitute is a virtual field trip. This is an interesting way to introduce learners to different out-of-classroom environments. 

Virtual field trips can bring learners face to face with wild animals!

A very useful tool for creating virtual field trips is Google Tour Builder. (Note that the 32 bit Tour Builder app will not run on 64 bit browsers, such as Chrome, so you may need to open it in Firefox or Safari).

An example is an aquatic ecosystems virtual field trip that I use as part of my ecology course with grade 10 biology students. The virtual field trip is used to introduce the topic, and includes questions for learners as they progress through the trip. Once they have completed this task, I ask them to work in pairs or small groups to create a virtual field trip of their own based on an aquatic ecosystem of their choosing. 

Learners can experience new or unusual environments.

Where possible I like to use my own photos, which provides an additional talking point for students. Alternatively, a useful place to get photos online is photosforclass.com, where you can search for photos that have been uploaded to Flickr and have been licensed by their owners to be sued for educational purposes. 

Clearly, there are many possible applications for virtual field trips: a trip to a museum, a gallery, a zoo, different terrestrial ecosystems, and so on. If a real field trip isn't an option, a virtual field trip may be the next best thing.

Citizen science in the classroom

Citizen science is science that involves amateur or non-professional scientists. It can take various forms, e.g. it may involve online tagging of photos taken by field scientists,  drones or camera traps, for example Zooniverse's PenguinWatch: http://www.penguinwatch.org. Other citizen science may be game-based, for example the protein-folding game Foldit (http://fold.it/portal/), which led gamers to solve the structure of a retrovirus enzyme in a matter of weeks - professional scientists had been trying to solve the puzzle of its structure for over a decade! (http://bit.ly/1tqDCLL).

I'm interested in using citizen science in the classroom. Roth and Lee (http://bit.ly/1O1q1Ig) have long advocated incorporating citizen science into the school curriculum as a way to increase science literacy, leverage lifelong learning, and foster participation in community issues. I recently had some of my Grade 10 students participate in Project Noah (http://www.projectnoah.org/), an online tool for documenting biodiversity around the world. It is specifically aimed at citizen scientists, with an active community of enthusiasts and experts ready to offer suggestions and advice for identifying species.

I had the students go out into the school grounds to take photos of the different organisms they found, then they returned to the classroom and uploaded their spottings to the Project Noah website. 

Student feedback was positive following the activity, with one student remarking that it was their favourite biology activity all year. If I were to plan it differently next year, I think I would introduce the project earlier in the school year, and encourage students to download the Project Noah app to their phones. They would then be able to hopefully spot a larger variety of organisms than we might expect to see around our campus in the centre of Bangkok! 

Encouraging learner voice and choice

Offering learners more voice and choice is increasingly being advocated as a way to improve engagement and personalise learning. Edna Sackson, from Inquire Within, also mentioned this to me following an earlier post. One of the ways in which I have attempted to achieve this is to give learners the choice of what finished product to submit at the end of the assignment. As ever with this particular assignment, student groups could choose any topic within the broader scope of genetic engineering (e.g. GMOs, cloning, forensic biology etc). However, instead of specifying a finished product that involved a report, or a PowerPoint presentation to the class, I gave them the option of what kind of final product to submit.

Upon completion of the assignment final products submitted included infographics produced in easel.ly, presentation-style reports in Prezi, and PDFs created via Google Slides. Many of the students were unfamiliar with some of these applications, and so were finding their feet with them to some extent. One interesting observation was a student who was explaining to her group members how to find their way around Adobe Illustrator. This was a good example of the teacher stepping back and ceding peer teaching opportunities to the students – I’ve never used Adobe Illustrator in my life! Other spontaneous peer teaching included students showing each other tips and tricks in Photoshop.

Student feedback following an evaluation at the end of the assignment was generally positive, with some neutral responses. Encouragingly, there were no negative responses, although Thai students are often reluctant to criticize even via anonymous evaluation forms!  

Reasons learners gave for enjoying the assignment included the freedom it offered them, that it was fun, it enabled them to use their creativity, and it offered them the chance to learn new skills, such as how to use Prezi or make infographics.

I also asked learners what aspects they would change or improve. Suggestions ranged from having groups present their work to the rest of the class (even if the final product was not a traditional presentation format) to requesting that I assign (!) topics to groups because some groups were deemed to have chosen “easy” topics. Obviously, this latter suggestion would somewhat defeat the purpose of this exercise.

I’ll finish up with a couple of direct quotes from the students regarding this assignment. The first quote supports the idea that learners appreciate the chance to be creative, the second one – well, what can I say!

“I really love this project because we have to use lots of skills not only understanding and writing but we also have to be creative to make an easy-reading infographic”.

“Its kind of fun using technology with the subject which seems to be boring like biology”.

Using the SAMR model to conceptualise asynchronous discussion forums

Asynchronous discussion forums (ADFs) are text-based, online forums that individuals can access at a time and place of their choosing. In this post I will discuss how ADFs can be conceptualised for learning at all levels of the SAMR model developed by Dr Reuben Puentedura. The SAMR model offers a way to consider the different levels at which technology may be integrated into teaching and learning: Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, or Redefinition.

Substitution
The obvious case to make here is that ADFs can facilitate an online debate that acts as a substitute for a more traditional classroom debate. There are similarities between the two approaches in that the debate would generally involve a topic that generates a certain amount of controversy, for example embryonic stem cell research, and learners would be expected to employ critical thinking skills and evidence-based arguments. The key differences are that in an ADF-mediated debate, learners would be practicing written rather than oral language skills, and they would have more time to gather evidence and make their case. 

Augmentation
Although ADFs could be substituted for a classroom debate, they need not replace it entirely. They could be used as a pre-debate activity, providing learners with an opportunity to gather evidence and refine their arguments. Alternatively, the classroom debate could be used as a lead-in activity to generate interest for the subsequent online debate. In either case, the ADF augments the classroom debate by affording learners a space in which to engage in dialogue over a longer time frame. 

Modification
This brings us to the modification aspect of ADFs, where learners can engage in a debate for longer, and potentially more deeply, as well as providing direct links to evidence that supports their case. They and their peers have more opportunity to evaluate these evidence bases, and thus they are moving away from what is offered by a traditional classroom debate. 

Redefinition
ADFs can redefine the traditional classroom debate by extending learner agency, for example by providing opportunities for knowledge creation as opposed to knowledge acquisition (McCormick and Scrimshaw, 2008). By posting to an ADF students are able to synthesise what they have learned, express it in their own words, and negotiate meaning with their peers. ADFs thus enable learners to engage “in the dialogues through which knowledge is constantly being constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed” (Wegerif, 2006a). This would not be possible in quite the same way during a classroom debate because of the more fleeting nature of verbal interactions.

An additional agentive feature of ADFs is that they look both forwards and backwards, pedagogically speaking (Lankshear and Knobel, 2008). That is to say, they provide learners with an opportunity to explore new understanding, whilst also demonstrating existing knowledge and skills. Consequently, there are more opportunities for students to learn from their peers, rather than from their teacher.

A further important affordance of ADFs is the increased opportunity for learners to engage in higher-level thinking. When I analysed the forum statistics following an ADF debate I assigned to my Grade 10 students, the number of views far exceeded the number of posts, supporting the notion that many students were reading the existing discussion before posting, i.e. engaging in higher-level thinking before participating, rather than simply posting for the sake of it. This is consistent with Saade and Huang’s (2009) findings from their university-based study of learners using an ADF, and is arguably an advantage ADFs have over traditional classroom debates, where learners don’t necessarily have the time for higher-level thinking before making a contribution. ADFs also clearly demonstrate how technology can facilitate social learning, i.e. computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) (Stahl et al., 2006; Wegerif, 2006b).  They are computer-mediated communication environments that “turn communication into substance” (Dillenbourg, 2005, in Stahl et al, 2006, p.12). Or, put another way, ADFs reify learners’ participation in a discussion, leading to the negotiation of meaning (Wenger, 2008). 

ADFs can record learner activity as well as being a product of their thinking. These records of interaction and collaboration have been identified as potentially important resources for improving intersubjective learning (Stahl et al, 2006). Intersubjective learning considers that individual meaning making comes about through social interactions with others, and is partly constituted by those interactions (Suthers, 2006). It could be argued that traditional classroom debates afford this as well, but again the asynchronous nature of ADFs allows more time over which these interactions may occur. 

A final point about ADFs is that they provide a great opportunity for metacognition, or making learners’ thinking more visible. For example, the forum software I use has a peer-grading facility. As learners grade the contributions from their peers, it helps them to focus on what they could do to improve their own contributions, and thus they are thinking about how to improve their own learning. I feel that ADFs can be conceptualised at each level of the SAMR criteria, including the key levels of modification and redefinition, for the reasons outlined above. In a future post I will return to ADFs and discuss how they may be used to enhance both general and subject literacy.

References

Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2008). New ways of knowing: Learning at the margins, in Hall, K., Murphy, P., and Soler, J. (eds.). Pedagogy and Practice, London, Sage in association with The Open University

McCormick, R. and Scrimshaw, P. (2008). Information and communications technology, knowledge and pedagogy, in Murphy, P. and McCormick, R. (eds.). Knowledge and Practice, London, Sage in association with The Open University

Saade, R.G. and Huang, Q. (2009). Meaningful learning in discussion forums: Towards discourse analysis. Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 6, pp.87-99

Stahl, G., Koschmann, T., and Suthers, D. (2006). Computer-supported collaborative learning: An historical perspective. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp.409-426). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Available at http://GerryStahl.net/cscl/CSCL_English.pdf last accessed 01/02/2015

Suthers, D.D. (2006). Technology affordances for intersubjective meaning making: A research agenda for CSCL. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 1, 3. Available at http://lilt.ics.hawaii.edu/papers/2006/Suthers-ijCSCL-2006.pdf; last accessed 01/02/2015

Wegerif, R. (2006a). Dialogic education: what is it and why do we need it? Education Review, 19, 2, pp.58-66

Wegerif, R. (2006b). A dialogic understanding of the relationship between CSCL and teaching thinking skills. Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 1, pp.143-157

Wenger, E. (2008). Meaning, in Murphy, P. and Hall, K. (eds.). Learning and Practice, London, Sage in association with The Open University