Different ways of engaging students. Sight and sound!

This food web is a good example of how pictures can be used in the classroom. Ecology students often look at foodwebs, and although they will have studied food chains, this concept is a little more detailed than what they have seen before, therefor an image can be a good way to explain the concept to students. If I was to use an image for foodwebs, or even food chains, I would get photographs of organisms that students would be likely to find around their community, and create my own image, in order to allow students to be able to relate more to the content, which in turn should create academic engagement by having connectedness to the world, by making a connection to their own wider community " (Department of Education, 2002, p23).

I came across the website http://www.learnoutloud.com/ which has many different podcasts on all sorts of educational topics, however it all seems to be American so may not be all that relevant, however is probably worth a look.

On the CSIRO website I came across a podcast that is all about Australian native animals and the effect that climate change has on them, which is not only an ecological issue, but a very relevant one in today's changing society, and is something that everyone should be concerned about. The podcast can be found at http://www.csiro.au/multimedia/Global-Warming-demands-ecological-action.html. The CSIRO website contains useful information on the topic of biology and ecology, and would be a very useful resource for biology and science teachers, as the information is from a reputable source, and often published by academics who have conducted extensive research. Due to this, the CSIRO website and the podcasts on it would probably be only useful to the higher level students, as there is more than likely a high level of technical language that may even be a little difficult for older students to understand.


References

Department of Education. (2002). A guide to productive pedagogies, classroom reflection manual. Brisbane, QLD: Queensland Government.