I took the first lesson of Exploratorium’s “Exploring Light: Hands-on Activities and Strategies for Teachers” on Coursera and have already learned more than I expected in two hours. I learned about how perception can be tricky and why, Ames room – a popular optical illusion demonstration, cow’s eye dissection (because they are similar to human’s eye) to understand perception better, read several scientific articles relating to vision and the brain, watched several optical illusion videos with explanations, and reviewed 3 lessons to integrate into the classroom. The course is for middle and high school teachers, but I can already see ways to integrate this for elementary schools as well.
I felt like this course was full of useful background about perception, the brain, and light; science theory, science research, inspiration, and useful NGSS aligned lessons. I am impressed with the quality of a free online course, but not surprised as I have done one of their other online courses “Tinkering Fundamentals: Circuits” a few years ago. I feel prepared to make an effective and exciting unit about light waves to tie in for 1st, 4th, MS, and HS NGSS requirements. The only thing I could suggest for them to make the course better is if they could explicitly list the NGSS standards each activity accomplishes rather than just posting a NGSS topic overview. If teachers like me are looking to find those connections, we probably already have this list, but what we need is help with making the connections, especially for those like me who are multi-grade educators.
I can’t wait to take the next 3 lessons and then draft a new unit on light for 1st, 4th, and MS grades. Maybe even drafting a HS unit will be in the making. This has also been useful to me for think about differentiating my workshops for the relevant grades. In this example, students in 1st, 4th, MS, and HS grades have standard requirements regarding light waves. This reminds me to create a maker ed unit for one grade, then find the other grades who have the same or similar requirements and adjust the unit for their level. I am always trying to accomodate so many ages and needs, that I have spread myself so thin. In this method, I can still reach the goals of helping many age groups in one fell swoop.