End of Course ~ Reflection

This was a great course. I found it challenging, engaging and relevant. (It makes me realize once again how important it is to have students feel this way about their own educational experience. ) I particularly liked United Streaming, YouTube, TeacherTube, image generator, Flickr, Google Map, blogging, Data Site... I agree with Peg that it might have been nice to have one or two face to face meetings, even if it would have been simply to share what we have created and brainstorm uses in the classroom. Also, I don't think I was as interactive with the other participants as I could have been. Perhaps one or two tasks which were explicit about going to another person's blog and commenting on their entries would have helped. I know that some of the other people (thank you Keri!) did this more than I did. Thanks for all of your support and help. You guys were awesome!!

Google Map

This is cool. We often have kids create/draw maps and I think they'd find doing this on Google Map quite engaging. My map is on the Skagit Watershed. I only did the upper watershed. (See link on right.) It was really user friendly and would take minimal instruction for kids to to access.

Customized search engine

I created a search engine on basic science sites.

Select...LCHS2 Science sitesSearch The Web

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The idea was to create a list of sites which were educational, scientifically sound and fun. I'm thinking of using it sometime when I'm gone and the kids are with a sub for the day. They'll create mini presentations about something they found interesting and describe the scientific evidence vs. inferences. There was more advertising than I was expecting when I went back and tested the search list via this blog. Its a distraction that will have to be explained to my students. (i.e. qwest.com is not one of the selected sites, etc.) Still, its a good tool to help guide the kids.

A Fun Assignment!

Robin Rubrick Cube, originally uploaded by j.auman.

This image was created using dumpr.net. Once I realized that trying to upload directly from my computer never seemed to work and I had to go through Flickr it went very smoothly. Another trick I discovered was to read the comments on the generator list below each listing, if someone had commented that the site didn't work then I skipped it. I'm planning on using this during year to take pictures of my classes and then create some fun pictures to post around the room.

Robin ~ soccer camp via Flickr

Robin, soccer camp, originally uploaded by j.auman.

Being a parent of senior is so wonderful and so bittersweet. This is a photo of Robin at her 'last' soccer camp as a La Conner Brave.

(This is a very painless way of posting photos to a blog!!) Going through Flickr rather than posting the pictures directly from my own files is so much faster. For some reason my computer is painfully slow when uploading photos. I browsed through Flickr looking for photos to use in science class. It was a little hard given my content: photosynthesis, cellular respiration, etc. Nonetheless many of the photos are stunning.

Letterpop

On the link list is the URL for my 'newsletter' using Letterpop. It's definitely an easy way to make a very quick and pleasing to the eye newsletter. I found that Mozilla is a better a browser than Safari when using this site. Safari will work, but not for all of the features. One of my first assignments for algebra is for the kids to write a mathography. I decided to use letterpop to create an example. When I tried to print it the page came out blank! Did other people have this same problem?

Google Documents and Others

I LOVE Swivel (all the data... not so much the graphing) and Google Documents is nice, particularly in its flexibility. I work on multiple computers and its a great way to work on something without having to email it to yourself or save it on a flash drive. The only bug I found is that when I inserted a table, it didn't print a table, instead it looked like lists which had been created using a tab. (???) Swivel is awesome... tons of data. I wasn't too thrilled about the graphing aspects... As a math teacher I'm not convinced that the students would have to do enough "thinking" (i.e. having to decide which data should go on the x axis vs. y axis... scale... etc.). It appears that you can import the Swivel data into Excel, or simply use it as a starting point for finding linear regressions, etc. I'll definitely be using this site this coming year.

My problem with Thinkature is that I really like the Inspiration software for creating concept maps, etc. and Thinkature was quite limited compared to Inspiration.

I had problems getting my document that I had made using Google docs to post to my blog. The reason is that I use two different accounts (gmail for google docs vs. hotmail for my blog) and the two accounts wouldn't talk to each other. I tried inviting one account to join the other, but I lost patience. Now I see why you should always work with only one account... ah well... live and learn.

YouTube and TeacherTube

Here's one of my favorite math videos. It's an Abbott and Costello routine. Enjoy!


I much prefer YouTube over TeacherTube. The later is useful for it's clips on how to do things. I just learned how to make classroom posters using Excel, but it felt pretty limited to me. YouTube has been one of my favorite sites for a while. (The have a large collection of Abbott and Costello routines.) If you're patient you can find some pretty remarkable things on it, but as far as usefulness in my classroom United Streaming is the best.

United Streaming and Library Resources

I must admit that I didn't use United Streaming this past year even though I knew it was a terrific resource. Boy, did I miss out! One of the very first things we are going to be covering in our science curriculum is the difference between evidence and inference. The textbook talks about the puzzle of the Iceman and I found the PERFECT video. It's the Discovery Channel video on the current ideas of the final hours of the Iceman's life. Along with the video there was a curriculum guide, additional resources, etc. It didn't take me long to find this video, when I typed in the broad topic of the Unit (inquiry) and then typed in the grade band (9-12), the Iceman appeared.

I'm hoping to use United Streaming on a regular basis this year. Even though our new science curriculum is extremely 'hands-on', there is still quite a bit of time devoted to traditional text based learning and this is difficult for many of my students. For example reading about cellular respiration is not particularly exciting, nor easy. If I can find a vdeo to interject into the lessons it will be quite helpful, particularly to my students who struggle with this level of reading.

When I went to Texas for the AVID training, they talked about using video in the classroom and how useful it can be, particularly for certain students. However, they also said, that you can't just turn on a video and expect kids to learn anything. It needs to be shown in relatively short segments (10 minutes) and then have kids process that information in some way before going on to the next segment. This makes a lot of sense to me and it's one of the reasons that I never really used video much in my classroom. It just didn't seem to me that my students were getting much out of it. I'm excited to revisit using video in my classroom this coming year.

Library Resources: I liked the homepage. It was easy to navigate, fun to view, well-laid out... Having access to the entire catalog is awesome. I must admit I was a little disappointed that neither science nor math had any resources/topics listed. (I'd be glad to help with this.) The other thing I was wondering about was would it be possible to purchase some online subscriptions to professional resources for the staff. i.e. an online subscription to Mathematics Teacher (NCTM), Science Teacher (NSTA), online Discovery magazine...

1/2 Way Point of Course

I've enjoyed working on this course. I've done several things I never though I'd ever do! (... for example, creating a My Space page or messing around with a wiki.) What I've particularly enjoyed is the low key atmosphere of the course. In other online courses I've taken there were strict timelines (i.e. getting certain assignments done by a certain date). It's been nice to feel like I'm more in control of the pacing. I also really appreciate the timeliness of the feedback. Thank you!

The Web 2.0 Tools were fun to peruse. I was pleased to see several sites I'm familiar with on the list... In the category for photo editting, Picassa was listed and I would 110% support this selection. It is the main photo program we use and I prefer it over almost everything else. (The only think I don't like about Picassa is that it is not available for Apple computers, it is strictly a windows product.) It has spoiled me, particularly in its uploading capabilities. Unlike i-photo which uploads every picture off the camera each time, this program can recognize what pictures you have already uploaded and then it only loads the new pictures. It also puts them automatically into folders, so it's fairly easy to locate a specific photo.

I enjoyed the site where people had told a story in a single sentence. Fun!

Moodles and vacation

July 24, 2007
We just got back from a week camping with the entire family. Spending time together is wonderful! We then went over to Spokane as a family and worked on one of our rental properties. What's interesting is that I think working together as a family is just as much of a bonding time as vacationing. In some ways, it's probably even better. (I'm not sure my daughters would agree...)

I got back and spent last night messing around with the Moodle assignment. I think it's definitely something I'm going to use, although I'm still not confident that I'm doing things correctly and I'm sure I haven't even begun to even scratch the surface of what a Moodle is capable of doing. (The learning curve seems a bit steeper than with some of the other things we've done.) I'm hoping to use it mostly as a way of sharing information about my classes, i.e. a separate one for each of my classes where class assignments will be posted and other pertinent information about what's going on in the class. My main hesitation is my ability to keep it up to date.

On a separate note, my youngest daughter and I had a fun time updating my 'My Space' page. She definitely improved it! Both of my girls thought it was a good thing for a teacher to have. Their thoughts were that it's a non-threatening way for kids to contact instructors, that kids don't really like to email their teachers directly, but that doing it via My Space would work well.

Wiki's

After spending the afternoon messing around with wikis, I'm intrigued by their potential. I think they could really foster some great collaboration between kids. I can see doing a project in 9th grade science where I would pair up kids not in the same class and they would have to create a wiki page/space together on a specific topic. Their main mode of communication would be the wiki. I like the idea of introducting my students to some new things on the computer instead of having them do the same stuff all the time i.e. power points, videos, papers, etc. Even though I was at first a bit intimidated by the wiki space, I found it to be fairly user friendly and I don't think kids would find it difficult to use.

My students this past year used wikipedia quite often when researching a project, which frustrated me to no end. I realize that I need to spend some time showing them exactly what a wiki is and why it really shouldn't be used in a high school for research. Perhaps if they have the opportunity to work on a wiki of their own, they will realize how skeptical you should be of information gathered from it, given the 'open' nature of the articles. I guess this boils down to the idea of instilling academic rigor in my students... holding themselves to high level of academic integrity.

Thoughts on del.icio.us and My Space

I like del.icio.us for several reasons. First, I work on 3 different computers so it will be nice to have all my bookmarks available no matter what computer I am on. Also, it was really interesting to look at some of the other sites other people had tagged who had also tagged something I had chosen. I found a couple of really useful sites that I didn't know about and I'm sure that I'll continue to discover many new and wonderful sites. Lastly I can see this being useful for my students. I've recently started having my students create fairly quick projects on the computer, i.e. a Power Point presentation using only 4 or 5 slides. My goal is to have my students research and create something in 2 or 3 class periods instead of it taking a week or more. Setting up a class del.icio.us account and then tagging sites that they can use for specific projects will help. Hopefully it will also help to steer them away from using wikipedia as a research source. (A pet peeve of mine... but that's another story.) On the topic of My Space I saw a cool application of it in a science classroom in Boston. The kids created My Space pages for different scientific concepts. For example electron, proton, etc. They had to introduce themselves, describe what their interests were, create "friends" for the concept to chat with, etc. Needless to say the students were totally into the project. Is anyone else having problems with the online Quicktime tutorials? Perhaps it's a function of my age, but the screen shots on the already tiny quicktime screen are really hard to see. Any suggestions?

Week 2: Create a blog

Two years ago my plan was to set a up blog and use it in my classroom. I was going to post a list of the weekly assignments so that parents and students could access it 24/7. I set one up and maintained it for ... oh.... about 2 weeks. I originally signed up for this course because I wanted to learn how to set up moodle. I think that a moodle is more what I want for my classes. (Hopefully I'll be better about maintaining a moodle site... but that's another story.) My goal is for my students to be able to access the assignments, including hand-outs. My first thought was to just complete the moodle module, but after looking at all the activities I decided that it would be neat to learn about all the various tools. Of course it would be great if we could get clock hours, but if not, that's okay too.