Categories: News

Interactive website a new tool for science class

&NewLine;<p><img class&equals;" alignright size-full wp-image-1494" src&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;schoolnewsnz&period;fastrackdev&period;com&sol;wp-content&sol;uploads&sol;2015&sol;05&sol;SND15-wk3--TCHG&lowbar;RES-Science&lowbar;website-Ben-Emma-Sam&period;JPG" alt&equals;"SND15-wk3--TCHG RES-Science website-Ben-Emma-Sam" style&equals;"margin&colon; 5px&semi; float&colon; right&semi;" width&equals;"300" height&equals;"185" &sol;>Science teachers and students now have an innovative new interactive tool to work with following the launch of a website earlier this month by Carmel College science teacher Benjamin Himme&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p> <&excl;--more--> <&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;I started developing the idea after having a conversation with my friend&comma; Samuel Crookes&comma; who works in IT&comma;&&num;8221&semi; Mr Himme says&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;I was inspired by the Khan Academy website&period; I was making videos for my junior science and senior biology students and after watching a Salman Khan video in which he made a mistake then went back and corrected it&comma; I started wondering if I could contribute to the website&comma; like you can with Wikipaedia&period;&&num;8221&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>That wasn&&num;8217&semi;t possible&comma; so the science teacher and the computer programmer joined forces to develop their own open access <a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;pathwayz&period;co&period;nz" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank">website<&sol;a>&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;I wanted it to be free education for everyone&period; I saw it as a waste of expertise if teachers and students couldn&&num;8217&semi;t share their knowledge&comma;&&num;8221&semi; Mr Himme says&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The site contains videos and notes for students&comma; and teachers have the ability to add and edit content and share their expertise and resources&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;It will be really good to have teachers contributing material&comma;&&num;8221&semi; Mr Himme says&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;As with Wikipaedia&comma; I believe that brings a greater breadth of knowledge and better quality&period; The system will track every change and can roll back the site to remove any errors&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;As it becomes more sophisticated&comma; we hope to add multi-choice questions for students to answer&period; This will enable teachers to monitor students&&num;8217&semi; progress&comma; and we&&num;8217&semi;ll also get students to write questions&comma; which other students will rate&period;&&num;8221&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The website&&num;8217&semi;s content is organised on a tree and branches&comma; and as content is added the tree will be restructured automatically to best display the content&period; One idea builds off another&comma; Mr Himme says&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>So far&comma; response has been positive&period; A week after going live 70 teachers and about 240 students had registered&comma; with 400 different people visiting each day&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>This article is proudly sponsored by<a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;deltaed&period;co&period;nz&sol;" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank"> Delta Educational Supplies Ltd<&sol;a>&comma; suppliers of the exciting new BeeSpi V Light Gate for Velocity and Acceleration experiments&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p><a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;pathwayz&period;co&period;nz" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank">www&period;pathwayz&period;co&period;nz<&sol;a><&sol;p>&NewLine;

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Rosie Clarke

Rosie is the managing editor here at Multimedia Pty Ltd, working across School News New Zealand and School News Australia. She has spent 10+ years in B2B journalism, and has spent some time over the last couple of years teaching as a sessional academic. Feel free to contact her at any time with editorial or magazine content enquiries.

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