Science Glossary

Science Glossary is a comprehensive listing of scientific terms and definitions. Users are able to scroll through the index of scientific terms or search the index for a specific term. Science Glossary includes a “random” button that, when tapped, will select a random scientific term and provide its definition and hyperlinks that connect users to related terms. When a related term is tapped, that term’s definition is displayed for users.  Lastly, Science Glossary was designed to complement the Vision Learning website (http://www.visionlearning.com/), where users can select and view modules about a range of scientific topics.

Instructional Ideas

1. Students can use Science Glossary to define unknown terms they come across while reading a text. To hold students accountable for understanding scientific terms, teachers can instruct them to identify a specific number of unknown terms during the reading of a text and following, compose a short, paraphrased definition for each unknown term.
2. While studying a scientific unit, teachers can assign students specific terms that they must present to the class. As part of their presentation, students can be required to define the word and use Science Glossary to locate the definition. Moreover, teachers can require students to identify the related terms that Science Glossary provides and instruct students to explain the relationships to those terms (e.g., a student can be assigned the term “proton” for their presentation and will define “proton” and then explain how it relates to “nucleus,” “atom,” “electron,” and “neutron”).
3. Teachers can create a scientific-terms assignment in which students are assigned a specific term by their teacher or by using the Science Glossary app’s “random” button. Students will then have to present their term to the class by explaining its definition, why the term is or is not important, and examples of how the term is used. To further integrate technology into the assignment, teachers can require students to create multimedia presentations about their term using apps such as Educreations, 30hands, iMovie, or Prezi.  Alternatively, students can create images to display a graphical representation of the assigned term with apps like Popplet, Pic Collage, Inkflow, and Explain Everything. Both methods would still require the previously named information, but teachers can post both presentations and images to their class website. Over time, teachers could amass a large library of these presentations, and images that could be shared with current and future students.

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