Session 9: Seam Summer Science Institute
Your Project for Fall of 2003

Your Project for Fall of 2003:

Set up a Welcome page for your course that you will put into place this fall.

• Start simple!   Include your course info, school logo, a few images and important links to other pages you might make, or to external websites. Remember that any Word document you already have can be opened in FrontPage or Dreamweaver and saved as .htm ... voila.....instant webpage! :)
• Back at your school, find out your options for software (DreamWeaver, FrontPage, Blackboard, etc)  
• Follow up on school-specific technology issues (how to upload to your server, how to specify a location for Warm Up form information) Project Seam will help you with this!

Pick three lesson topics from your class

• Define your learning goals / objectives for these three lessons
• Think about areas students have difficulty understanding 

Write 3 Warm Up assignments (3 questions each) for each lesson

• At least 2 questions should be open-ended. Some options for starters:
  • "What is the difference between...?"
  • "Why do you think...?"
  • "What determines ....?"
  • "What happens if...?"
  • "Do you think that...?"
  • "Estimate how many..."
  • "In your own words, explain..." (especially good for translating chemical reactions, mathematical equations into real words!)
  • "Explain your choice." - always a good ending for a warmup question!
• You might want to make one question multiple choice to verify that students have read the material required before class
• Include a 4th question box for students to ask questions and submit comments
• Generate a Warm Up form template (warmuptemplate.htm) that you can use to make specific Warm Ups. Remember that once you have a basic form, you only need to modify it with new questions!
• The IUPUI Center for Teaching and Learning will be working with our group to write the correct html code that will allow you to collect your student responses in a database bin that will be provided to you as part of this workshop.

Implementation

• Make students aware of your course webpage, and assign Warm Ups in appropriate lessons.  Specify guidelines for grammar, students working together, etc., that make you happy!  
• Collect student submissions and determine from their responses how you would tailor classroom discussion based on their prior knowledge
• Use selected, anonymous (nickname) student responses in your classroom discussion.

Assessment and follow up

• Design a survey for your class to assess JiTTs usefulness in your classroom
  • Study skills, class preparation, motivation, content knowledge
  • We might want to develop 1 survey for our whole group, or one per school.
• Meet for 1 afternoon in the fall to discuss progress. WE migh also set up a time to come to your school and meet with you (and your tech person) individually.

Note:  As far as I know, YOU are the first 'JiTTers' at the High School level !  We have a GREAT group with lots of possibilities for support and collaboration within schools and within disciplines. 

I will post a final list of course participants, with e-mails, within a few days. Remember to submit Way Cool Websites as you find them! Please feel free to contact me at any time!

Kathy Marrs
IUPUI Department of Biology
723 W. Michigan St.
Indianapolis IN 46202
(317) 278-4551
kmarrs@iupui.edu