Intro to Anatomy/Physiology Video

Guiding Principles Re-visited

At the start of the web tools course, I was asked to reflect upon my guiding principles for using technology in the classroom. Here were some of my thoughts:

1. Does it help students apply science to daily life?
Activities that encourage students to use the web to find, for example, the pros/cons (and the factual information to back both) regarding the application of new technology are used to help students to think critically about how science affects their lives and their world.

2. Does it offer an alternative learning experience we can't do without the technology?
Offering access to virtual labs that allow my students to "see" and "manipulate" atoms and molecules, change the temperature or pressure of a gas, and numerous other activities that would not be safe or possible in the average ninth grade classroom as supplements to actual hands on labs are activities I frequently use to cover the less hands-on-friendly physical science concepts.

3. Am I doing old things in old ways? Using a projector/white board to show notes and demonstrations, using laptops in place of encyclopedias and newspapers, and using laptops for word processing are ways that I use technology weekly and even daily, but when the resources are available, why not use them?



Now that I have been introduced to many new webtools, I find the demand to incorporate technology in a new and productive manner to be less intimidating. Not only are there many tools that students can use to be creative and to collaborate with each other, the list continues to grow.

I feel positive that as long as I continue to focus my technology use on the learning outcome, asking myself how the use of a certain technology will encourage students to be independent, creative learners, I will be successful in helping students use these tools to collaborate and create new things, rather than using new and exciting technology to accomplish old-world tasks. The bottom line is that in order to prepare my students to successful in a web 2.0 world, I had to jump into it myself!

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.