In September 2002, I brought a new digital camera into my 9th grade physical science classroom to show it off to the students. I showed them all of the features and told them that I was excited about what great pictures I could take with a 3.2-megapixel camera. This show-and-tell took place at the beginning of class, and then I put the camera away. We proceeded to the lab table to build electric motors with wire, magnets, and a 9-volt battery. The students were engaged in this lab, and the groups progressed smoothly through all the steps. The lab activity was going so smoothly that I decided to get out my new camera and play with it while the students were working. For fun, I decided to take pictures of the electric-motor lab setups being built by each lab group. I was trying out the different features of the camera as I went around, without really thinking about the pictures I was taking.
As the lab time wound down, I went to my classroom computer and uploaded the pictures from my digital camera. Coincidentally, I had a computer projector checked out from the media center that day. Without any premeditation, I asked the students to come back to their seats, and I told them that I wanted to show them the pictures that I had taken during the lab activity. The last 10 minutes of that class were a revelation for my teaching career! As I started showing the pictures of their electric motors on the big screen, they began to critique each other's work without any prompting from me. They started asking each other excellent questions about the lab setups. Why did you do it that way? Did that way work better? They were also complimenting each other on their work. Complimenting each other's work is not a common practice of 9th graders. One student who was usually not motivated by lab activities asked me very quietly if he could go back and rebuild his motor. After the bell rang to end the class period, the student was still there. He asked if I could retake the picture and put it on the big screen at the beginning of the next class period for everyone to see. That was the first time that student had ever shown any interest in a class activity.
The Light Goes On
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