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Feedback on Science Resources

by Jean Weller 4 years, 5 months ago

Corey has included me as a co-author on several resources, and I'm going to provide feedback here because it may be useful to everyone else as well!

 

For the lesson plan Constant Velocity Walking Activity, you have taken a lesson already on our site and put it into Open Author, which is great!  This allows teachers the opportunity to easily remix this resource.

 

You add a little of your own opinion into this resource when you include information about what teachers can do if students don't all have devices.  That is really helpful!!!

 

As you read through the lesson you are adding, think it through as if you were actually teaching it to YOUR students.  Would you do the lesson exactly as it is laid out?  Or would you change anything?  Provide your expertise as a teacher--remember, others who read this may not have your experience!  What can you clarify to help them use this lesson well?

 

One thing that must be changed is the attribution.  You just link to the resource on #GoOpenVA.  But you need to include the original lesson plan (https://goopenva.org/courses/acceleration-and-velocity-through-walking-using-paces-and-excel/view) and the original authors name.  Give them the recognition that they deserve--we all want that.  

 

Thanks,

Jean

 

Jean Weller 4 years, 5 months ago

Corey, for the lesson on Bending Light - Determining the Index of Refraction of Different Liquids:

 

The same comments apply for the attribution!

 

It looks like what you've done is taken the original lesson and copied it into Word to make more easily usable.  This is perfectly fine.  However, it might be more useful to actually put the text into the text box of Open Author rather than a link to the Word document.  It keeps teachers from having to download (and click on yet another link).  

 

HOWEVER, this would require a little extra work.  The images you use don't copy and paste into the Open Author editor.  You'd have to insert those seperately (using "Insert Media" button in the menu bar of the editor).  So those files would have to be image files (jpgs or whatever).  

 

So you have to decide if it is worth it.  If you leave it as a Word document, please make sure you do include Alt text for the images (right-click on the image, choose Picture from the drop down menu, then choose the Alt-Text tab to add a short description).

 

You could keep the worksheet at the bottom of the plan as just a Word document to be downloaded, if you think the formatting is important for it.

 

thanks,

Jean

 

Jean Weller 4 years, 5 months ago

Corey, the Lessons Visualizing the Direction of Acceleration Using a Bubble Level and Using a Diffraction Grating to Determine the Wavelength of Light are great (but change the attribution!).  These are definitely ones that you can just copy and paste into the Open Author editor rather than add as a downloadable document (save that extra click!).

 

Thanks,

Jean

 

Jean Weller 4 years, 5 months ago

Liz, great remix for the Photosynthesis Diagram.  I did edit to take myself out as a co-author of the original  - I didn't really co-author it.  I was just cited so I could check out the resource.

 

Also, I notice you haven't aligned this one with a Virginia SOL yet.  Please do that, too!  You can just edit the resource OR you can add it right there on the resource landing page (anyone can add SOL alignments to any resource).

 

Thanks,

Jean

 

Jean Weller 4 years, 5 months ago

Liz and Corey,

I'm cross-posting a note from the MS Group about using resources from SERC  You'll need to edit the resources you've remixed from this site!  Thanks!

 

Can you please edit it though and change the attribution for the original main resource?  Right now you link to the lesson as it is in our site, but the terms of use at the SERC site (see https://goopenva.org/courses/discovering-the-effect-mining-has-on-land/view) says:

We encourage the reuse and dissemination of the material on this site for noncommercial purposes (like education) as long as attribution is retained. To this end the material on this site, unless otherwise noted, is offered under a Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0. Attribution should include at a minimum a link to the original material on the SERC site and credit to the original author (see above for determining that information). In most cases including all the information in the citation format above is preferred.

 

So they want a link to their original resource in the citation.  

Jean Weller 4 years, 5 months ago

Liz, Looking at your lesson: https://goopenva.org/authoring/452-52-minute-challenge-green-your-school-remix/view

 

This  looks really good.  In the text of your resource it would be more helpful for you to link directly to the resource: https://allendistinguishededucators.org/DiyGuides/52-Minute-Challenge.aspx rather than to the lesson on #GoOpenVA as you have it now (it will save teachers one more click).

It look me a while to figure out where to find the actual activity on that page -- it would be a great help if you could just say something in your text about teachers looking at the Project Plan materials link in order to get the tools they need to do the lesson!

Thanks,

Jean

 

Jean Weller 4 years, 5 months ago

Lindsey, I edited your remix https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/109/overview because I needed to figure out how to add attribution to your remix.  The DESCRIPTION box strips out all the URLs so it was difficult for anyone to find the original.  I finally determined the best way to do it in this layout is to add a "Task" at the end labled Attribution for Remix.  Then I just copied and pasted your original text from the Description box, which included the links even though they don't work in Description.  

I think this will work.  What do you think?