Grade 9 World Wildlife Fund Presentation by Pedro Bara Neto

As a follow up to the Iguasu Trip and the completion of the Science unit on Environmental Dynamics, the Grade 9 Class attended a FLEX period presentation and Q&A by Pedro Bara Neto, one of the key environmental scientists at WWF-Brazil. Pedro has been tasked with mapping the flora, fauna, and terrain of the Amazon so that infrastructure development is held in check. His work is based on extensive fieldwork in the Amazon and modeled using the sophisticated HIS-ARA tool.

Use Chrome translate to read more about Pedro Bara and an article summarizing his work

Graded's Ardusat: To Infinity and Beyond

On August 3rd, 2013 Graded’s Ardusat team’s experiment will be launching from Japan to the International Space Station (ISS). The launch will take place this Saturday at 16:48pm São Paulo time, or Sunday at 4:48am Japan time. The experiment will be run from an Arduino Satellite to measure and keep track of the way solar flares affect the radiation of the earth’s atmosphere. Several other schools have carried out an experiment on the Ardusat however, this is the first time Nanosatisfi and NASA have sponsored a Brazilian school to use it. In the next few weeks, the team will monitor the data collected by the satellite, and later on release the results. You can watch the release live at this LINK.

Yes. This is the actual rocket.

Gamification in Biology

This post by Ms. Silvana Meneghini is cross posted at Technology is Happening @...

Gamification means applying certain gaming elements to the teaching and learning process. It appears at the Horizon Report 2013 as one of the technologies that will have a strong impact in higher education in the near future. Graded's Innovate 2013 Conference hosted some gamification sessions which inspired our Biology 9 teacher, Ms. Beck, to apply the idea in her DNA Genetics Unit.

Two elements of gaming that are very important and actually mix together involve "storytelling" and "challenge".  In a game, the fantasy aspect is key to transport the player to another world where a challenge will take place. Below, you will see the storytelling and the challenge for the DNA Genetics Unit. It involves groups of students trying to unlock the secrets of DNA, which takes us to other elements of gaming: "cooperation" and "competition". The competition element involved cooperation within groups to come up with the first DNA model. This process actually mimicked the real life challenge among different scientific groups around the world when the DNA structure was  unveiled by Watson and Crick, who won the Nobel Prize. The students watched a movie about the real world DNA scientific competition at the end of the Unit.

At the end of this post you can watch Ms Beck's video  describing the whole gamification process in the DNA Unit, which was used to encourage student independence. She reports that students were on task and engaged while she was able to offer more individualized support. In order to encourage such independence, the "challenge" was combined with another important element of gaming which is a "reward system". That involved the use of bagdes and a leaderboard. The badges were created by the teacher and assigned to students as they achieved levels, built vocabulary, found facts, created concept maps, etc. So they were associated with achievement in terms of covering the material/activities. Below you can see the badges that were assigned through Edmodo.

A similar principle was applied to the use of a "coin leaderboard", which indicated the top 20 students with more "coins" collected. The coins were actually physical "bingo"coins that students would get as they completed tasks and levels. The leaderboad is therefore not based on who is smarter, but based on an incentive to cover the material and activities (collect coins). Students could then exchange some coins for "prizes" such as taking a 5 minute break, going to the snack bar, etc

The overall feedback from Ms Beck is very positive, and while she will not use gamification for all her Units, it seemed appropriate for the DNA Genetics study. Enjoy Ms. Beck's full description at the video below!




The ideas about gamification in this post came from the following sources, which you can check for more information:

Kapp, K.M. The Gamification of Learning and Instruction. 2012. John Wiley & Sons. Pfeiffer.

"The Rules of Gamification". Razorfish Outlook Report. <http://razorfishoutlook.razorfish.com/articles/gamification.aspx>

Science and Social Studies Curricular Programs

The deadline to register for courses for next year is March 15th and there are still many high school students who have finalized their choices. Last week we shared information on the changes to our math program and this week we have information on our science and social studies departments.

9th and 10th graders next year will take Integrated Science I or II which will open up options for them in 11th and 12th grades. We are pleased to be able to offer IB Chemistry SL next year. We will be looking at other options for the years to come. The integrated science is a blend of biology, chemistry and physics that will run throughout the two year period. Graded has teamed up with Educhange to develop these new courses. The future is looking bright for Graded students in the area of science.

While nothing will change for 9th and 10th graders next year in the area of social studies, 11th and 12th graders will be able to choose from Brazilian Social Studies, IB Psychology SL/HL, IB Economics SL/HL and IB History SL/HL. The department will be working next year to redesign the 9th and 10th grade courses and we'll be looking at other elective options for grades 11 and 12. Next year is the first year that Graded students will be able to use the IB Brazilian Social Studies as their group 3 course for the diploma. Another example of greater choice for our students.