Thing #13

Online Interactive Learning Tools

Google Earth Location

I picked Potato Creek State Park in Indiana (just south of South Bend). This is a state park we found a few years ago because it was half-way between my brother and sister-in-law in Chicago and us in Grand Rapids. It's nothing super fancy, but it has worked very well for us. I'm sure we will go back for years to come :)

Google Earth Placemark

We are going to Washington, D.C. for Spring Break this year. My husband has never been to Washington, D.C., so I'm very excited that he will be able to see some of the sites there. One of my favorite places to go there is to Arlington National Cemetary. I could spend all day walking around and visiting the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. So, that is what I picked to Placemark.

Quizlet

I definitely plan on using this with my students in the future. The Anatomy & Physiology course that I teach involves a lot of terminology (almost seems like a foreign language sometimes). And not only do students need to learn the terminology, then they need to be able to put those terms to use as they describe and explain how the different body systems function. Since it is an upper-level elective course for mostly for students who are interested in health care related careers, I do ask them to learn a lot of terminology. And that's hard. So, I think that a site like Quizlet would be a great place to send kids to make flashcards and play games as they study. One downfall I found is that in order to upload photos, you needed to pay for a subscription. It was only $10 for the year which might be more than worth it if that's what it would take to really help students. But, it would be nice if it was free. There were some free images you could use, but they were limited, not necessarily what I wanted (especially for an upper level science course), and the search function wasn't all that great.

Thing #12

Evaluation/Assessment and Survey Tools

Google Forms
Love it! I learned about these in a technology presentation from a colleague who was embedding these into his Moodle site and using them as "brainstorming" activities or "bell beater" activities. I've found a number of ways to use them including a little "quiz" students take about me at the beginning of the year, a way to collect e-mail addresses, a way to collect updated data information for my dissertation, etc... Overall, I love this application! I didn't the "summary response" tools existed. I will definitely be looking that those from here on out.

Rubistar
I created a rubric for the Spinach Leaves Lab that students complete during our unit on Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration. As a part of this activity, students place spinach leaves in a jar and connect an oxygen gas measuring probe and a carbon dioxide measuring probe to the jar. A computer program (Logger Pro--Vernier program) then caputures the data from the probles. Students experiment with different variables (light levels, light colors, temperature, etc...) and then watch what happens to the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the jar. They analyze the data and draw some conclusions regarding the rates of photosynthesis and cellular respiration under those experimental conditions. Currently, I have a form with questions for them to fill out. However, as a part of our NCA (AdvancEd now...or something like that) work, I need to have a rubric assignment where I can gague how well students do analysis. This seemed like a great assignment to "tweak" inorder to fit that goal.

Data Warehousing
I must admit that I am pretty unaware when it comes to knowing about anything related to data warehousing in my district. One of the tools mentioned was Moodle, and I am aware of that. I guess our grading program/student management system would be considered data warehousing. It is the Blackbaud system, and I am not a fan. The grading component of it is NetClassroom, and it is not user friendly for the teacher or the student/parent accessing the information. I think that student management systems like this and course management systems could be used to inform instruction in several ways. First, when I give a test, I would love to have a simple, easy way to analyze test questions to show me which ones students were missing with more frequency. I guess if I put all my tests on Moodle, I could get that information. But I don't have all my tests there, so now I just have to rely on a feeling that I get while correcting and noticing that more students seem to be getting particular questions wrong. I think it would be really interesting to see a data analysis of our students scores on a test like the ACT or MME to see what content areas students seem to be struggling with. Of course, FERPA/HIPAA is very important and student confidentiality and privacy need to be respected and protected.

Thing #11

Presentation Tools

I created a Prezi on the Cell Cycle and cell division: http://prezi.com/cbrm_vhbf17g/mitosis/
This is a great topic for a Prezi because it is a cycle. The visual layout of a Prezi really helps communicate that concept.
I think that Prezi and PowerPoint presentations each have their place. For a concept like the cell cycle, a Prezi is a nice visual way to display not only the content of each of the stages of the cell cycle, but also shows how those stages all fit together. However, organizing the Prezi can sometimes be more trouble than it is worth. I've given students the option of creating a Prezi or PowerPoint for some of their presentation projects. One complaint that I often get is that all the zooming that Prezi does makes people a little "motion sick." Plus, unless the concept does have a nice "story" to it, Prezi just seems like a fancy, zoomy way to present the same information. But I do think that there are concepts (like the cell cycle) that would lend themselves to good, quality Prezi presentations.

One thing I did think about as I was creating this was how I was probably violating some copyright laws. I often use images (under fair use) in my presentations. But then the presentations are only available either in my classroom (during class time) or on my Moodle, password-protected site. However, creating this Prezi (at least on the free Prezi program) makes the presentation available out there on the web. So what kind of copyright issues does that bring up? If you were going to place "things" in a Prezi that would normally be okay because you were "covered" under the fair use guidelines, what happens when that Prezi is now public?

Here is a screen shot of a website with mitosis picutures that I used ZoomIt on. I think this is really nice for highlighting areas of the screen, getting students to focus in on just one section of the screen (if the page is particularly "busy"), and obviously for visually impaired students. The draw option was probably the thing that I would choose to use more often since it was so easy.

Thing #10

Digital Storytelling

I chose to make a digital story about the cell cycle. This is one of the next topics that we cover in class. As in a lot of biology topics, this is a very visual topic where we look to see the cell dividing and pulling apart it's chromosomes.

First, I created a storyboard for my digital story. I used bubbl.us; however, I'm not a real fan of that program. I use Inspiration more often. But, I realize that bubbl.us is free and web-based. So, I guess it will work.

Then, I downloaded and opened Photo Story to begin my digital story. Well, since I am doing this a little "last-minute," I didn't have access to all the digital images of cell division that I wished I had. And, looking at the ones available on Picassa and Flickr, I think that I might actually have students take photos while we go through the cell division unit and have them create their own digital stories of the cell cycle. Anyway, it was just easier for me to grab family photos that I already had saved on my computer. So, I made a family digital story project about what happened with our family during 2008.

Once I made and saved the story, I tried to go and put it on my Weebly site, but something was wrong with Weebly (they were "fixing" something). So, I created a Voice Thread account, created a project, and uploaded my story there. So, I think that this is the link that you need to see the story:

http://voicethread.com/share/1612006/

The feedback that I got was mostly about the time spent on each slide and some of the transitions. I realized after creating the story that you can control the amount of time spent on each slide (clearly I should have messed around more with the first few images). I did go and chance the time spent on each slide, but that was kind of a pain. I didn't narrate anything since I hate listening to my recorded voice, and my microphone is tucked away in the basement right now. But, I think that students might like narrating it (they constantly ask me to "Jing" things just so they can be really loud and then listen to themselves on the playback).

Digital Storytelling in My Classroom

As I mentioned earlier, I can see a great opportunity for a digital story telling project in some of my units like the cell cycle, photosynthesis, cellular respiration, etc... Actually, this would make a great project for those topics because, to be honest, those topics are sometimes not exactly the most exciting things that we cover in the course of the year. So, this would be a nice way to add some excitement. And, in doing so, I think that students might really learn the material if they needed to manipulate the information and create a story out of it.

Thing #9

Digital Images

Digital Photo Editing

I opened a photo in Picassa and then edited it in Picnik. Included screen shots of before and after editing.

Some of the editing features I applied in Picnik:

1960s, cross-process, HDR-ish, and Holga-ish. I adjusted each effect so that I ended up with an image with interesting contrast and color and nice rounded corners.

I can see lots of neat ways to use this type of resource in my classroom. One of the first ways that comes to mind is having students use this resource in conjunction with their Plot Study project. One part of their project is to do a "virtual collection" of organisms--photos of a variety of flowers, animals, fungus, trees, etc... Last year one student had AMAZING photos that she had clearly edited. I asked her what program she had used, and she explained she had used Picnik. Picnik was an easy program to use, and it made the photos look so interesting and neat.

One of my goals is not only to teach students the content (science, in my case), but also to teach them some "life skills" and expose them to programs and ideas that they might use in the future. For instance, I had students use Dropbox last week. Even though our school filter doesn't allow students to upload or download to Dropbox, I still made them all sign up and accept an invitation from me to a shared folder. I think this is something that a few students might really like (especially if they look in the folder at home over break and realize they can open and save into it to complete their assignment). Likewise for Picnik and other programs like that. Even if they don't use the program all that often in my class, I think it's worth it to expose students to technology like that so that they know it exists and is out there.

One other reason I really liked Picnik and the other photo editing programs was that it made the photos look so cool that I said, "wow!" One of my goals for teaching is to inspire an awe and wonder in the natural world that God has created. And I can freely articulate that since I teach at a private Christian school. Spending time editing an image does help you reflect on how beautiful even the most simple things in life can be.

Public Photo-Sharing

I uploaded an image to Picassa and here is the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Sfz3bl91op8t3vrwFlU87A?feat=directlink

Here is the photo that I shared (just to use the embed code):

From 21 Things Shared Photo Album

Thing #8

Copyright and Creative Commons

I created a copyright quiz using Google Docs. I sent the quiz to several coworkers and family members (who are also educators). Overall, people seemed to have an okay understanding of copyright and fair use. One thing that I found was that people (myself included) seemed to think that there were "hard and fast" rules about the amount of material that could be used inorder to stay within fair use guidelines (400 words of text, 10% of work, etc...). I think I remember learning about these guidelines either at a conference of from one of the tech people in our district. I also found that people (including myself) didn't realized that unpublished material has copyright "rights." I guess I just had not thought about it. But I guess that makes sense. I did know that you could register your copyright since I have instructions for how to do that with my dissertation (once it's finished!).

I created a Creative Commons license for my personal Weebly site. Here is a screen shot of my license (sorry it's so small).

Capstone Reflection for Things #1-7

How will you use these technology applications to improve learning experiences for your students and/or improve your own practice?

So far, I have thoroughly enjoyed learning about these various technology applications. I can think of a number of ways that I can use these technology applications to improve learning experiences for my students and to improve my own practice. I think the biggest area of interest for me right now is with a web presence.

I currently have a Moodle site for my students, and I really like it. One of the reasons I like it is because it is not “owned” by my school. Let me explain. The first few years I was teaching, I invested MANY hours in developing websites for my classes using FrontPage. I liked designing the pages, adding images and other links, and linking to various documents and presentations that we were using in class. Then, my district decided to change their webpage, and FrontPage and all the work I had done were deleted. The next “hot topic” for my district was Blackboard. I took a Blackboard training course and spent a lot of time setting up Blackboard sites for my courses—uploading documents, creating assignments, creating quizzes/tests, etc... Then, my district decided that Blackboard was too expensive, so they dropped Blackboard (along with all my work). So, I found a Moodle training and signed up for that. The most appealing part of Moodle, for me, was that it wasn’t “owned” by school. Therefore, if school “changed their mind” about something, my Moodle course would remain intact. And, Moodle was free, so I didn’t have to worry about school deciding it was too expensive and switching to a new program.

I like Moodle, but it has some big limitations. I have briefly seen/used PBWorks (as a part of a PBL training I took this summer), and that looked like it would be a good program to use. But a free website creation program like Weebly looks really appealing. I like things to be visually appealing, and so it seems like you could do that with Weebly. It has definite advantages over a blog. Although, if the purpose of the site was simply to communicate with parents and help students organize their schedules and planners, a blog would be a good option. But I want to be able to put content on the site, link to documents, videos, and other webpages, add images, and more (Google Forms, embedded videos, links to places like Quizlet and Quia).


What effective teaching and learning strategy(ies), based on the work by Marzano (http://gets.gc.k12.va.us/VSTE/2008/ ) will these technology applications address, to make a difference in the learning experience for your students?

Summarizing and Notetaking—A class website seems like a logical place to house class notes. Not only will class presentations be uploaded/linked (PPT presentations and Prezis), but this might also be a nice place to provide a link to a Google Docs location where students can construct “class/group” notes and study guides. I find that some of the best studying, questions, and explanations I hear over the course of a day are student-to-student where one is trying to explain something to his or her classmate. This would provide a background format for that type of collaborative work.

Providing Recognition—As a part of a class website, student work can be uploaded to the site or linked to the site. For example, one of my existing assignments asks students to create a blog for their “Plot Study” project. If we had a class website, that would be an easy way for me to provide links to other students’ blogs so that students have the chance to see the work that their classmates are doing. Some of the blogs that have been produced have been outstanding, so letting other students see them would be a great way to highlight and recognize great work and to hopefully encourage other students to improve the quality of their own work.

Choose one of the seven things and describe an activity or lesson you could use in your classroom. Include in the description how the lesson meets either a Michigan curriculum standard or another Educational Technology standard.

The Thing that I picked to create a lesson or activity with was Thing #2: Google Docs. As a part of our ecology unit, we talk about characteristics of living things. This is related to two Michigan curriculum standards:

L2.p1A: Distinguish between living and nonliving systems.
L3.p3B: Distinguish between the living (biotic) and nonliving (abiotic) components of an ecosystem.

Since we don’t have little “clickers” in our district, I thought that creating a Google Docs Form to ask students to brainstorm about characteristics of living things before we talk about them would be a good idea. I included the form at the bottom of this post.

This seemed like a very nice “quick” activity to engage students, get them thinking, get EVERY student to participate (their answers are anonymous so they don’t need to be scared of participating. It would also be a great place to start—gage students’ prior knowledge, identify any misconceptions, and build from there.