Final Project

I chose to use an "In Plain English" style video to explain what my final project is all about. Please check out the video, and then you can head over to my biology class wiki to see what the class connect pages look like.

Discussion Reflection

After participating in group discussion this week, I have found that many of us feel much more confident with our use of webtools, along with having a broader perspective of what is available to use in the classroom. I have long wanted to post a self made video on teacher tube, but never had the confidence to do so. Through this course, I posted my first video, and now feel comfortable with how I can have students do the same.

I am excited to start planning lessons that allow me to show off my new webtools, and like so many others mentioned, I am interested in the student response. Since my teaching assignment changed, I will be teaching the same group of students that I had last year. I think this situation will allow me to get student feedback because so much of the new web tools have a different focus from the technology that I used last year. I am excited to change their use of the web from search-and-find to create and collaborate. That is really what the message has been for me, that I need to focus on using technology to get students working and thinking together to create something of their own. I am looking forward to seeing what my students are capable of producing!

Timetoast

I haven't had a chance yet to try this tool out for myself, but wanted to mention Timetoast time table generator so everyone could have a chance to check it out if they were interested. I think this would be a great chance for students to research events in science individualy and then use their information to collaborate with a group to create a comprehensive timeline.

I tried to embed an example, but didn't have any luck, so I will have to try to create my own time table later this week.

Bulletin boards and sticky notes

This week, I tested out a few different new web tools. Wallwisher is a neat tool that allows the user to create a bulletin board to put sticky notes on. It can be interactive, so though mine was done entirely by me, I see it being used in the classroom to encourage interaction between students. I found wallwisher easy to use, and could add an image, video, or link to each of the sticky notes posted.

I had been using diigo for several weeks, but only for bookmarking websites. I had been unable to install the tool bar since I was using a district owned laptop that blocks all installations. However, this week I discovered Diigolet, which works almost the same as the full blown diigo tool bar- and I was able to add it to my favorites in the "favorites bar" folder, so now I have a Diigolet icon to use when needed. This is great because I can highlight and leave sticky notes on online text that I read, and my notes will be there when I come back to it. I also can add new bookmarks to my Diigo library, even when I am searching at work, and will be able to find them at home. How efficient!

The last tool I worked with this week was the create a graph tool.
This tool was very easy to use, and allowed me to change my graph from a bar graph to line graph and back again with out having to re-enter my data. I can see this being used to help students understand which graphs are used to represent the relationships between the numbers, and also as an option when creating a graph as part of a lab activity.

Comfortable with wikis, not with blogs

After discovering a few years ago how much easier maintaining a wiki at wikispaces was compared to managing the webpage provided by the school district, I have relied on my wiki to provide students with class information that is up to date with course content. I am in the process of making a new wiki for my biology course, since my other wiki was aptly named "Solbergsphyscience" for my physical science course.

For those just venturing into the use of wikis, their application and use in the classroom is awesome. Students can set up a username to gain access to edit pages, send messages, and start a discussion board. I always like to point out that as the "administrator", I am privy to who edits what content, when, and have never had any inappropriate edits that would seem humorous to the the average 9th grader. :) The wiki also allows for RSS feeds to science articles, which means there are updated articles that I don't have to worry about updating each week. I've also used the wiki to post links to articles or websites to be used during class to make the process more efficient for students.

I am open to the use of blogging in the classroom, I just struggle a bit with how to manage it. Despite the wonders of google reader, I think it would be difficult to monitor all posts and comments for 100+ students if each had an individual blog. However, I could see including a concept driven "blog spot" within an existing wiki. This is something I am excited to work into my teaching, I will just have to iron out the details to make it work in my classroom.

Simulations

I set out to find simulations that I would be able to use in teaching biology for the first time this fall. I have used many simulations and virtual labs in teaching physical science over the last several years, so I thought it would be fun to find some new simulations. I thought using a dissection simulation prior to dissecting would be beneficial as it would familiarize students with the tools and procedures of the lab before getting starting on an actual dissection.

Frogguts.com provides an excellent dissection simulation demo, but the entire program costs $300 annually. I thought it would work well in my classroom to have students work through the demo and then compare the organs and systems of the frog to those of the human body by using the human body simulation.

This would encourage students to make the connection between the organs and body systems in a frog and those in humans and also assist them in identifying similarities and differences. I am excited to find more simulations and am open to suggestions. The use of simulations could also be helpful in identify misunderstandings that students have since I could easily circulate and ask questions as they worked through the simulations.

Using Online Data

When looking for online data that I could integrate into my classroom, I immediately thought of checking the South Dakota Game, Fish, and Park website. The small town in which I live and teach in is surrounded by lakes. Our area tourism guide likes to use the line "20 lakes in 30 miles" to encourage visitors to come to the Glacial Lakes area.

Many students fish and enjoy water sports, yet don't give much thought to the biology and science processes being affected by their activities. I thought creating an activity that would require them to use online data to research non-native species and why the introduction on non-native species is a bad thing would be both revelant and interesting.

Information that I found available on the state website, included pictures of the species and maps indicating where species might be found in the state and for some, nationally. Fact sheets for a variety of non-native species were available as well.

Trying again: Mitosis Video

Ah, technology. I thought after all of the resizing my video would upload, but since I could not get it to work, I thought I would go about it through another route, and upload it to teacher tube. It worked! However, to make sure the content is school appropriate, teacher tube has to review every video that comes in. After seeing the "Under Review" icon where my newly uploaded video should be for the last several hours, I then opted to get a youtube account, so this has been quite the experience. However, I must say, the video uploaded quickly, and there were no issues at all. If you do watch it, you may wish to turn the sound down, I guess talking that close to the camera makes for a loud video! Here's my video, embedded from youtube.

Mitosis Video

I spent an afternoon drawing out the pictures and then videotaped myself in an attempt to do a Science in Plain English talk about mitosis. I didn't have a tripod, but it worked ok to just use my digital camera on the video setting. I gave it a few tries, and was satisfied with the last take, considering that I was talking, moving the pictures, and doing the taping myself. :)

Getting the video from the camera to my laptop was easy, uploading the video took some time. The screen showed that my video was uploading, but well over 30 minutes later, I could not publish my post because that would cancel the video upload. I finally became impatient, and opted to re-record my video, changing the setting on my camera from tv movie to small size. I thought the problem could be that my first video was too large a file to upload. The second video I tried to upload was much smaller. This video still took well over 20 minutes, and still did not upload. I then decided to import the video file into windows movie maker to try to condense to an even smaller file in hopes that it would upload. This time, the file uploaded within a few minutes, but when I looked at the preview of my video, there was a black box with a red x. I will need to figure out how to speed up the uploading process before I use it in my classroom.

From having done the activity myself, I think students would have a lot of fun completing a similar project. I also feel that through the process of making the pictures and deciding what to say about each one, students would better understand the subject matter because creating the video encourages the student to focus on what is going on and what is important. I think the implications for using this activity would be great for clarifying many concepts and also incorporates some of the 21st century learning skills, where students use technology collaboratively to create new products.