Re: [Fhsst-bio] material

[Mark Horner]

Hi Stephen and Andrew and everyone

Nicole - as a teacher do you have any advice as to structures and 
formatting which works?

For physics, coming up with some basic formatting was very easy because 
we will have so many worked examples. We wanted to structure the worked 
examples in a similar way to try to emphasize a single problem solving 
approach.

We tried to avoid presenting the student with pages of solid text. To 
break things up we inserted interesting facts which we formatted 
differently to the rest of the text, different font and different 
indenting. We will have some sort of icon to go in the margin as well.
Figures and tables can also be used to break it up. For example, when we 
discuss the fact that as temperature increases phases change we ended up 
with a ton of solid text. To break it up we inserted a table with the 
thermal properties of 6 or 7 substances that the kids should know, 
things like Carbon, Iron, Gold etc. Just so that they aren't intimidated 
by the amount of text. It also gives them a feeling for the wide scope 
of temperatures that actually occur in the real world. We can also 
construct problems which they need to refer back to the table to solve.

When I met with a Professor in the education department at UCT he said 
that the pages should be 1/3 whitespace when we print the books, which 
surprised me a bit. This will be accomplished by the choice of margins 
but he did emphasize that pages of solid text weren't going to work for 
the weaker students, especially if they are second language English 
speakers.

So I don't really have any strict set of guidelines for you but I 
recommend trying something similar with Biology. Try to use tables, 
figures and  interesting facts to break up the text but without 
interrupting the flow.

I would suggest indenting tables and interesting facts and changing the 
font to make them standout. Try to include figures in the explanations 
wherever possible.

Thats all obvious stuff though. Once someone puts something up we can 
make a more standardised layout for further contributions.

Cheers,

Mark




Stephen Kolomyjec wrote:
> Thanks,
>
> That is basically what i am doing. So since im not the only one doing it 
> that way i will continue onward.
>
> regards,
>
> stephen Kolomyjec
>
> > From: address@hidden
> > Reply-To: FHSST Biology Authors List <address@hidden>
> > To: FHSST Biology Authors List <address@hidden>
> > Subject: Re: [Fhsst-bio] material
> > Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 08:16:05 +0200
> >
> > Hi there. I am just typing in my chapter in Word because I don't
> > always have access to the net. I think perhaps you should just submit
> > your stuff and you can always change your formatting later.
> > Quoting Stephen Kolomyjec <address@hidden>:
> >
> > > Hello everyone,
> > >
> > > I was just wondering if anyone has up loaded any of their 
> > contributions yet?
> > > I'm almost done with chapter 2 of section 4 - biodiversity and am 
> > wondering
> > > what formating should look like once its up. I tried looking at the
> > > completed math or physics books for inspiration but the material is 
> > just too
> > > different.
> > > any ideas?
> > >
> > > Thanks
> > >
> > > Stephen Kolomyjec
> > >
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