Case Study: An Interview with Rachel Love, Science Teacher, Virginia

Rachel Love is a science teacher at Western Albemarle High School who, as a teacher in a very first year, shows that Gizmos are as helpful to the newbie teacher as they are for a teacher with years of experience.

Actually, in Rachel's case, the term new is somewhat of an understatement: Rachel was in her first few weeks of student teaching at Western Liberal HS when her coordinating instructor had an emergency and Rachel was needed to to assume the full role of teacher.

Additionally, Rachel is a recipient of a 2005 Knowles Foundation Science Teaching Fellowship.

Let's learn more about how Rachel uses the Gizmos in her teaching by asking her a few questions.

How did you first hear about ExploreLearning?

Through my graduate program at UVA [The University of Virginia].

What were your first impressions of the site and Gizmo when you signed up? What keeps you using ExploreLearning?

The Gizmos allow my students to be more actively engaged with what I’m teaching, something that is especially important with my lower level classes.

What Gizmo did you have the most success (and/or fun and/or satisfaction) teaching with?

The Element Builder. It's fantastic!

What was it about this Gizmo that made the lesson successful?

The Element Builder gizmo allows the students to see for themselves what happens with the addition/subtraction of protons, neutrons, and electrons.

I wanted the students to DO something rather than listening to me talk for a 90 minute block. I presented the material on atoms and the differences between them, then distributed laptop computers to each of the students and asked them to build several atoms, beginning with hydrogen.[At first] the material was overwhelming [for the students], but when they actually started playing with the Gizmo, the lights started to come on and, by the end, I think they understood the essential information about ions, isotopes, and atoms.

We had also been discussing isotopes (carbon-12 versus carbon-14, etc); this gave us a chance to see what made something an isotope, what happens to the actual element when it decays and how to make it more stable. After this, they became very interested in radioactive decay and other things dealing with nuclear chemistry, so I plan use the Half-life Laboratory Gizmo to demonstrate this next time.

How did you use the Gizmo in class? (For example, Did students work individually on computers? In pairs? Did you use the Gizmo as a demo for the whole class? Did you assign the Gizmo as homework?)

I demonstrated how to use the Gizmo, then had the students work individually to complete a worksheet that I had made. We finished by using the Gizmo in class and went over the questions, referring back to the Gizmo on the projector as needed.

[Download Rachel's worksheet in PDF or Word format]

If you've used other technology and/or teaching methods to cover this same math or science concept, did you find the that the Gizmo helped you cover the topic more quickly/easily, less quickly/easily, or about the same? Explain.

This is my first teaching experience (I'm a student teacher), so I've never taught this before. However, I have highly recommended this particular Gizmo to all of the other student teachers in chemistry from UVA. Several have used it and have also said how beneficial it was.

How did the students respond to the Gizmo?

They really liked it — in fact, the next time we had class, they specifically asked if we were going to do another one.

Describe the technology setup in which you used Gizmos. (E.g., Networked classroom? How many computers? Laptops? Cart? Projector? Interactive whiteboard?)

I'm able to check out a laptop cart with enough laptops for each student to have his own. The school has a wireless server, so the students are able to log on and use them individually; I demonstrate the Gizmos with a projector. We are supposed to be receiving interactive whiteboard within the next couple of weeks or so, and I anticipate using it to demonstrate in the future.

Thanks for taking time out of what must be a very hectic first year of teaching to answer our questions.