Connections Across the Species: My Reaction to a "BYOD to Discover Tree Species" Lesson Plan

When completing this same assignment, but with my content area of mathematics in mind, my group had a difficult time finding an advantageous way to incorporate students' personal devices. This is because technology in math is usually used as a graphing device, and we did not think a students phone would be a accessible way to view these graphs. After reading a Biology lesson that encourages students to "BYOD," or "bring your own device," many more ideas popped into my head for I had forgotten about the camera device that many phones include. I thought this group's usage of the camera to document their findings was both very creative and effective in many ways.

One way in which I thought this lesson was a winner, was that it had a variety of different activities that mirrored the typical heterogeneous nature of a classroom. Many different learning styles are included within  the lesson plan. For example, their warm-up worksheet has the students draw. This kind of learning might appeal to a student who enjoys engaging with visuals and illustrations. I was particularly interested in both their active mini-lesson and  work period that had the students use their senses to explore a surrounding wood, use their senses, capture species on camera and document their findings. I know that there are many bodies of research that suggest that experiential learning does indeed help students. Does anyone one remember John Dewey? (See a few posts down for some information about him and his ideas that align with experiential learning). I have also seen with myself that when I try and remember one take away from the class, that what I usually recall is what I learned during an active activity. The technology aspect of this plan really brings it together. Using the cameras on a student's device is great for it is a way to get the students thinking about keeping records and documenting their evidence which is at times a part of some of the methods involved with the sciences. I think the experience would be a lot different, as well as difficult, if the students were to attempt to use a different camera. Learning how to use a digital camera would add another task to this lesson, and would take up much time. Instead the students are already knowledgeable of their phone cameras, which would hopefully have good enough qualities to see some of the details of the trees.

 The only thing that I would tweak, is that I wish students had more than ten minutes to capture the 10 different trees or the amount of trees needed would be lower. I think by giving them time to think about their photographs and the subjects within them, would add a whole element to this lesson plan. This would really force the students to make scientific, useful, and perhaps artistic decision. Overall, I thought this lesson plan was a fantastic example of BYOD and I would love to be a student in that type of classroom with fantastic and creative teachers like the ones that created the plan!