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?