Uso didático do celular nas aulas de biologia através da ferramenta Google Classroom

Abstract

Students are increasingly connected full time through cell phones which have internet access, while some teachers try to avoid the use of such devices in classrooms due to a variety of reasons such as lack of experience, preparation or security in dealing with new technologies. The main objective of this work is to develop a didactic sequence that will help teachers and students in the process of teaching Biology in high school classes through the use of the Google Classroom (GC) platform. The model adopted in this research was an action research in the participatory modality, a collaborative process in which the participants engage in a collective manner in the actions and in the development of the solutions of the problems. The research to elaborate and test the didactic sequences was carried out in a public school in Rio de Janeiro State, initially involving roughly 90 students of the night shift. Most of them are in the age group between 15 and 25 years and belong to two high school classes. School enrollment in Google Suite For Education was completed in the first half of 2018, and students accounts and virtual classrooms were created. Throughout the remaining school year, the classes had expository classes added to the various activities in the GC, exploring their different functionalities, such as their integrations with YouTube, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Forms, photography usage and filming, social interactions with debates and conversations. The activities were created in order to make the teaching- learning process more interesting and interactive, including videos and photos taken by the students themselves. At the beginning and at the end of the school year, students were asked to answer diagnostic questionnaires. All activities were observed, recorded, analyzed and eventually corrected / altered. Besides, all participations in the proposed activities and school performance in the regular evaluations were analyzed in order to assist in verifying the quality of the developed process. The GC was very simple to use and at the same time rich in functionalities and connectivities. Its visual is similar to a social network and allows the students to carry out various activities in a practical way, taking advantage of a series of resources, both from the internet and their cell phones, following socio-educational proposals in the learning process. At the end of the research, a didactic sequence was developed for the use of the Google Classroom tool, in Biology classes with the main focus being the cellular phone.