this week,7 PLN and webinars

I have not had time to sign up for a live webinar. I did one a few years ago because of my work in a research lab and it was great. I checked out the 3 session GoWildwithWiki on Edublogs live. Very good. It really showed me that cooperation among groups working on projects needs to be set up first. If adults have a hard time collaborating in this webinar then so much more for students. Role assignment is important before beginning the Wiki work. Actually I will do a short discussion on cooperative groups and even practice with a short activity. The webinar was goo for me to see how others, unfamiliar with the technology stuggle to make it work. I will know what to anticipate in my students.

My PLN was not nurtured much this week. Busy with the Irish festival and any extra time was spent on the projects. There are those on my network that I know will update often and be relevant for me so when pressed for time these are the ones I hit. This past week I learned a little more about Diigo thanks to Clif. Personally, I am trying to incorporate some of the new tools we learned from class without adding anymore to my bag. My delicious account serves me well and I can find the newer tools like Diigo when I have time and my brain is not so full.

I was surprised that I missed Twittering. There were actually times when I thought it would be nice to do it from my phone. That thought was thankfully very short and gone before I could act on it. Did you read the USA Today article on twittering? Intersting stuff.

It is such a habit now to check my PLN at least every other day that I think I will probably continue after this class. I also look forward to learning something new each day. I will spend some time reorganizing my twitter followings. Some have been not so informaitonal. I really don't want a total glimpse into someones life, just something relevant. I tweet with a few friends and personal family things are ok and even relevant but I like my twittering for education purposes to stick to education, especially if they represent a company.

My Projects...so far

After 3 days of ranting and raving(uploading/downloading nightmare)...just ask my husband...I have something to smile about. I have fallen in love with my wiki!!
I chose to start one on PBworks. There are some things that I am not happy with, not enough pizzaz but I don't want to pay yet. I enjoyed getting the pages set up and even got projects and a lab posted. My wiki name is nothing special but maybe the kids can help come up with a better one.
I selected PBworks because of my PLN- Classroom 2.0 discussion on the best wiki site. I also decided after "talking" with Tom that I would only use one wiki per class and divide the class up. There might be a way to link wiki's togther but I think I may only start with one class. I am using my voicethread as an assignment and I plan on making at least 4 of these this year. I totally think these are cool! My goal is really to have the students begin to make them.

The last project I need to do it the class blog. These are always fun to put together and I would like to have the instructions for a glogster project for the virus unit.

We are on the road again tomorrow for the Dublin Irish Festival in Dublin Ohio. The second largest in the country. It is amazing. We are working the festival with a friend who has a food stand. It will be a working vacation.

Funny thing while I was at the family reunion...I was updating my twitter and blog pages and my neice Mikayla, 9yrs old, asked if she could follow me. She had her own twitter already!! It is a great way for her and I to stay in touch. I showed her the picnik site and by the next day she had registered and done some work on family photos. Anything I learn now she wants to know about it. Only 9 and totally into web 2.0!

PLN for week 6

I am a little behind. I will blame it on family!
My PLN got an added boost when I replied to the introduction emails sites sent me. With all the checking of blogs, twitters and assignments I forgot to check my email! Now I am really into the sites I want.
I found prezi.com through JakeSchroeder, a biology teacher on twitter. It is definitely interesting. It may make a good visual presentation tool for students to use. I also have some new networks through PBworks- Science In Action. Brad posted a good lab for using Google Earth called WOW Windmills

I also took a workshop for Project Wet. Excellent workshop and the book we received is amazing. Loads of lessons for all age groups. It was recommended by a fellow student from another online MSU class. I learned of the Leaf Pack Network from the instructor. She said I don't really need to order the kit but it was a great method for looking at stream macro invertebrates.

I am making connections with my co workers again and sharing ideas. I am already emailing examples from our class to colleagues. I have so very much enjoyed all your presentations. Some amazing work!!

Week 6 reflections

This has been a crazy few days trying to get caught up from vacation. I love working with powerpoint but it is so time consuming. My presentation took nearly 4 hours. I just know this is not normal. I do tend to get a little OCD about finding just the right photo and that is not easy, especially now that I am trying to be more careful with copyright.
I do like the screen casting. Yes, very time consuming. I tried both computers in the house. finally had to purchase another microphone and after 2 days did get sound recorded. I am uploading to Youtube as I type. I am disappointed that Jing does not allow me to embed from there. I need to try screen-o-matic. I want to eliminate the extra step if I can. I see these as being available to students to review from, watch repeatedly to gain understanding or as an introduction. I also like the fact that they are quick, relative to actually speaking in front of a class. I tend to be very interactive with students so I ask and take comments from students. In reality a power point can take up to 20 minutes in class but only 8 minutes by screen casting it. I would like to do a narrow subject matter that students have trouble grasping on a screen cast, like cellular respiration, or protein production. Students need repetition and having these available for would help.
I finished my voicethread and I really enjoy making these. Quick as long as I find the right photo but for the first slide I made my own. I did mine to use prior to the unit on ecology. I see this tool as being useful for so many things. I even shared it with the English teacher at school today.

Finally, a PowerPoint

We made it home late last night and it was a wonderful week. First, almost all of our family met for a graduation. That's the photo minus two that could not make it.Wednesday Dirk and I left and traveled to Fire Island, by ferry from Long Island, to spend the night camping in the dunes of this National Park. No cars allowed, we were on foot. From that adventure it was a road trip to the Presidential homes of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt. My husband is a history buff so it was wonderful.
It is back home to a lawn that grew 6" (no kidding), we had 3 days of rain and more today!
I worked on my power point for ecology. I have been stressing over it. My comfort zone is middle school, always has been. But this year they need me in the HS. I feel like my presentation is still for 7th graders. I worry that I am stuck in a grade level and can't get out. I can take constructive criticism so dish it out! My stomach is in knots already thinking about the new year any help would be wonderful.
My audio is not working so good on the computer. It appears to record but doesn't play back. We did all the adjustments but still nothing. We are trying to sort it out. Hopefully by tomorrow.

What is Ecology

View more presentations or Upload your own.

I just noticed that many of my photo credits did not show up. Will check on it- I was meticulous about citing.

Love online data

There is nothing like getting students intersted in a topic and i think using real data that they can actually check out from a project/study is wonderful. This gives weight to so much in science. Previous teacher I worked with would make up data. This is so much better. As I move into the HS curriculum I am hoping to find units that a data project will work. While there are good resources out there, our class list is great, mostly it is for earth science. In our environmental unit we could use data but this is such a small unit and I don't know if I will have the time necessary to increase the time spent.

I will be looking ahead in August as i start planning the first half of the year.

PLN for last week

right now I am struggling with a slow computer (OMG) and 5 nephews (under the age of 6) in the same room with me. There is no doing homework here. I got caught up on my network last week before leaving. I am following about 6 tech sites for smartboard users and they deal alot with elementary school. Math was a big subject this week and English is always popular. Where is the Science? I did find Jag Galaxy that is very intersting and fun.

I finally joined the Higher level group on Smartboard Revolution. Sounds like they are more for colleges but it should be useful for HS. I did find a great resource created by Dana Huff. I have been checking out each page as I find time. SB revolution always has some good info, I found Bruce White's rules for effective use of the smartboard. I also learned how to keep my tool bar on the smartboard from defaulitng. I had this problem last year but didn't know how to fix it.

This week I have posted a few things to specific twitter followers. I think maybe Twitter may work, time will tell.
I will not be home until Saturday this week so my power point will not show up until Sunday. All my files are home. And as one sister-in-law asked "how are you getting anything done?" Well not very well. the computer already froze twice, losing all my stuff. I think having 8 tabs open it rough on the system :0 and my personal computer will not keep the wireless connection. Oh well. I am going to try to enjoy the rest of the vacation and play catch up on the weekend.

Real data use

I did post on the wiki the CDC-MMWR. This site is useful on several fronts: it gives students a real up to the week report on communicable diseases and lets them hypothesize why the trend happens but also drives home the health risks involved in certain behaviors.
When I did this for microbiology, I chose Syphilis because I had heard it was on the rise in California. I followed the SE, specifically Florida. I was able to watch the increase over the semester and through the research for the disease I found that numbers increased during the harvest season and continued to increase as farm workers moved to northern states. This lead to looking into the health of our migrant population and what employers can do.
Students today need to see this real time data for themselves to see that these diseases are on the rise. I am sure there are tables for students that want to be veterinarians. The California Rabies page has data by the year. There must be more . If anyone comes across data tables for animal diseases please let me know.
The WHO has a data base for diseases, risk factors(obesity, water quality,literacy). It is the WHO Statistical Information System
Click on the the major category interested in or go to the Data And Statistics tab. there are many options. It would be a good project to compare the US with other countries. Or compare different years.
There are always data tables for Earth Science but I don't have much for Biology.
Any you find would be appreciated.

What have I learned- Week 4

From reading other blogs I know we are all learning about ourselves and how we learn best. when overloaded some hide, some shut down, some dive in and gather even more. I have learned I ponder. I walk away but the topic is never leaves my mind. I wake in the morning wondering how to fit it into my life, into my teaching. I jot down ideas on the bedside notebook before I turn in. I talk about it to my family until they scream Enough already.

From my PLN: I jump from one of my blogs I follow and ended up on a teachers wiki. It was just what I was looking for. http://mrboyersclass.pbworks.com/ One of the projects I want to create for the new school year is a wiki page. I like the looks of this wiki so I will begin creating one on PBwiki. I also found ClifNotes. An excellent site that I have enjoyed.
I received news that I am getting a SMARTboard for my high school room (YEAH). I wanted to expand on what I learned last year so I joined TeachersLoveSmartboards, smartboardrevolution and freetech4teachers. I have already listened to two podcasts and learned about filedropper.com for moving files from home to school. My jumps were taking a beating.
I also started planning a lab for september on GoogleDocs so my partnering teacher can work on it with me. I did this after I read about googledocs on a blog I follow, tom barrett

I realize I need specifics from my network. There are blogs that are so general that I would have to check often to see if anything applies. By paring down my network to those I really need I am better able to use my time and actually gain material/instruction that works for me.

Twitter- No, this has flown the nest and is not coming back. Oh well.

Simulations- These are truly wonderful. A picture is worth a thousand words. I just want to be selective. As I move into August and begin planning my first year as a HS biology teacher I will add one to each unit. My delicious account now has some great ones to get me started.

Google Earth- Oh so fun but I will use it sparingly for biology. It has features that I am amazed at but much more suited to Earth Science. Google continues to amaze me.

I have plans for the wiki and will begin building this week. I will do a HS blog but I want a new look that is different from my middle school blog. This I am still pondering.

Simulations

This past week I was overwhelmed with the links for simulations. After hours of watching I had to get away. I took a few days of web-free time. Simulations are great but where do they fit in with my teaching? I was approaching it from the wrong end- looking for a video that I could use before I selected my content goal. As I look now I want simulations for the cell unit for sure. This is one unit that is so hard for students to get excited about. So many kids are visual learners and without the opportunity to really see organelles and DNA it really does not interest them.

For simple animations:

http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animation.html the science in focus page has some timely animations with tutorials

For interactives:
http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/index.html
http://www.biologyinmotion.com/index.html this has cartoons with explanations
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/hotscience/int_biol.html
http://www.biozone.co.uk/links.html there are extra links for all the different science topics
http://www.nclark.net/Cells At the bottom of the page are Links, many are very specific animations and interactives

I will be adding simulations to my guiding principles for using technology in the classroom. While many are amazing, some are too complex and distracting to use. The simulations that I select must

* enhance my learning goal (this is a must)
*give visual when no other visual works as good
*further explain what we have learned
*provide a good intro or end review
*not require serious class time to explain how to use

I envision using one good simulation that works with the unit content and posting several on the blog/wiki for students to access that need extra help. I already know that my 20 week biology class will not have extra time in class to do the "fun stuff". I will have to keep it concise.
I was interested in the online labs. I may select one to use as a prelab to what we do in class. That will take some more searching.

A Teaching Video

Here is a video that has features I like for the classroom. The sound has been removed (copyright problem) but I like it for that reason. When students are learning something new this type can be useful for having them explain it. For an assessment I would have them write what is happening at each stage. I think I will actually turn off the sound on clips to see if it will present to students better. I also like the concise format, nothing too busy to get in the way of what is happening. I little too involved but like the format.


Nucleus Medical illustrations is wonderful for anatomy and disease. Their HIV video is excellent. Brain interactive is also good with objectives, study and review sections.

Video used in class

After reading the chapter I realize that I didn't always use the videos to their fullest. While I had pre and post discussions, correlating the video to the learning objectives, I didn't have students write anything down. this was detrimental to my slower learners. The higher level thinkers could keep it all together, watch the video, be thinking about questions posed and relate it to what they have learned but a handful of students can't process it all at once. "The researchers also concluded that interactive video worked best when it was guided and structured, as opposed to being entirely under the control of the learner"(chapt 2, p12). Without the structure of formal questions to answer I think some students couldn't process it all. Here is the video and the questions we discussed. (next time they will write down the answers before our post discussion)





What type of metamorphosis does this organism use?
What evidence does this video show for it?
Why must the cicada shed its skin?
What is an advantage of a 17 year life cycle? a disadvantage?

Summing up week 2

It is amazing to me that I have only been in class three weeks- I have learned so much. It does tend to swirl in my mind but I will tease it out to make some sense of it.
Widgets- I did finally learn to add a widget. I check the weather often, now I have it on my page.
PLN- I am still twittering but as of yet I have only found relevant material from those in class which is ok. My son said that I should be using my phone to send updates! no thanks. I am using my electronics more than I really care to now. I do need to drop some of my twitter groups- nothing but ads and car loan information under the guise of science.
I have found some students in another online course that I have been emailing with good information. I tend to like the deeper relationships that you don't get with 140 characters. Goggle reader is helping me stay on top of most things digital.
Images- I have enjoyed the image tools I learned to use this week. I have shared Picnik with everyone who comes within 5 feet of my computer. I also was very impressed with Creative Common. That people would want to share and have their work used by others is amazing to me. I certainly made me want to participate on some level. As I did more searching I really looked at Flickr and liked what I saw. Soooo I did it, I registered (I have now registered more in the past 3 weeks than I have in the past 3 years!). I even went one step farther, I joined the educators group. I uploaded my photos and put them into sets.
Copyrights-In really examining copyrights and the material I used in class, I am nervous. We have all found a graphic illustrates a point best and now I read we can't "copy the same works for more than one semester, class, or course". I did find that our textbooks in class have great graphics but to add these to a power point or just in a large format so the whole class can see them is difficult. I did have a disk of the entire textbook in a different school and it was great. All the diagrams and photos, already paid for by the school, could be used. The textbooks i had this past year were older, had no dvd. A scanner would help but is time consuming. I am already checking into the HS book I will use. The Hangarter video (17 year cicada) I posted is also offered on the University of Indiana website so I was safe but the youtube video allowed me to show it on the whole screen. There is a whole cupboard full of home taped videos from a previous teacher. I think they will have to be tossed in the circular file! Our school will tape if we give them notice of a show with educational material to use for class but I never want to show an entire video, only short clips and sorting through is time consuming. I did use Thinkbright for video clips. They don't have as many for science but our social studies teacher uses it all the time. It lets you search for only topic specific clips from a video collection and download them.
Applications for students- So much of what I learned this week I want to teach my students. As I move to the HS, I am assuming (which could get me into trouble) that they will be more active in the learning process. I think that the tools I learned this week will allow students to "shift from consuming media to being a media creator. Giving students powerful media-authoring tools means relinquishing a degree of control, but doing so also makes it possible to help them learn in more effective ways (and tighter time frames) than ever before." (from edutopia) We are to be moving to a more student-centered classroom. I wan to give control to students to interpret what they learn or ask questions in a non-linguistic format. Glogster for education is really fascinating. I do see students using this for science to reorganize facts, interpret what they have learned or express what they are having trouble grasping. My problem will be coming up with specifics instead of overwhelming them (like I feel most days). This is where I am already looking ahead to the three projects for this class that I will use this coming school year. Now on to simulations..........

Picnik

This is my original photo so
you can see the difference

This site is a blast! It is easy to use, so many options and turns average photos into something of a wow. I used one of my butterfly pictures from my yard. I cropped, saturated, used B/W focal and then added a matte halo. I can't imagine myself using this in class but to add photos for my blog page it would be great. Haven't played with the collage feature yet. I really see my students using this. They must do a full science project this year in HS and this tool will add uniqueness to their presentation.

Great site - TED

I found this site http://www.ted.com/ a while ago (maybe years) and didn't ever check again. This is amazing for students in the classroom. I want to present scientists as real, not someone just in a lab coat spewing unintelligible words (this is the view some students have) and with web tools we now have the ability to do new things in new ways. This is one. Hearing directly from the scientist about his work. I will add these when relevant to my student blog pages.