scienceplace

It’s hard to believe how fast two weeks of ED 554 flew by. I have never learned so much in two weeks of any class before. This class taught me about several practical tools that I can incorporate into my teaching in order to give students the richest, more versatile learning experience I can.
In all the education courses I’ve taken so far I’ve been taught to customize education, to use alternative and authentic forms of assessment, and to create activities for students that are both educational and engaging and that require higher level thinking. That always seemed like a tall order butI finally feel like I have the tools to accomplish these tasks.
The one thing I wish I had attempted to do was to make a Prezi presentation. I stayed away from Prezi because it’s very different from the way I think. I will, likely, spend some time exploring Prezi on my own and at least give it a chance before I dismiss it altogether. I most enjoyed creating my VoiceThread project. It took me a couple of days to get the grasp of it but in the end I was happy to have learned a new skill, one that I believe I can use with my students in the future.
The group multimedia presentations were all informative and I enjoyed learning about different tools, some of which I had never even heard of before. I especially enjoyed researching student response system and learning about their applications in the classroom.
Today we talked about wikis and I found the lesson very helpful. I can definitely see using wikispace and giving each of my students their own place to create and edit content. I believe this sense of ownership will be very gratifying for them and will, hopefully, inspire them to take more responsibility for their learning.
I have always believed that no technology will ever replace a competent teacher. I still hold to this belief but also realize that it takes a good teacher to implement change and to try to exhaust all avenues in order to reach and inspire students. Technology can be one of the keys to reaching some students who might otherwise be disengaged. There is always going to be the issue of using the right balance of traditional teaching methods and technology. I think it’s important to remember that technology for the sake of technology is not going to help students. But, if used with purpose and in a thoughtful, methodical, and deliberate manner, it can truly enhance the educational process for both students and teachers. And that is what I will take away from this course.

“Past Leaves” – Discovery Files
obtained from http://odeo.com/episodes/24782389-Past-Leaves-The-Discovery-Files

I just found this podcast on Odeo and I think it can be a good addition to my technology-integrated lesson plan. It’s a very short podcast (less than 2 minutes) and I think it will make a great hook for my global warming lesson because it talks about how rising levels of CO2 led to a mass collapse in plant biodiversity in the past. The findings came from fossilized leaves found in Greenland. This is just an interesting tidbit that can get students thinking about the topic. The most fascinating part, to me, was that the CO2 concentration (900 ppm) at the time of the crash was what we might reach by the end of this century.

Please take a look at my Products page to see a comic I made about my son and his friends using ComicLife. This program was very easy to navigate and use and I had fun playing around with it. I can see its practical application in the classroom in that it’s a great way get kids to put content into a framework that is fun and makes sense to them. This way it’s far more accessible and relevant to the student.

I looked at webbychat http://www.webbychat.com/ which will allow me to add a chat room to my website. I can see using this with students to promote group discussion. I can schedule chat events and invite my students to participate. There are lots of interesting features like Silent Insanity which would allow me silence anyone I want. I’m not sure if I’d need to use that for students but it’s a neat option anyway and would be useful if chats were open to anyone viewing the site. It seems like the program is easily customizable and pretty easy to use.

Here is a great resource for science teachers: http://greenopolis.com/ Students can LEARN from their files and “field trip” videos. They can  ACT by taking part in a program that tracks recycling and rewards participants with points. Accrued points can be turned in for REWARDS. I did a search in my zip code, looked under attractions and came up with a list of places where points can be used. One thing that jumped out at me was the Reston Zoo because that’s a place I take my son a lot.  Points can also be traded in for food, movie tickets, live events, at hotels, even for dry cleaning services. Students can also COLLABORATE by reading other people’s blogs or writing their own.

I also liked the games that are on this site. I can definitely see using some of them in my future instruction and I think this site, in general, will have a lot of useful resources that will be helpful to me.

I had success with VoiceThread today. I was able to make a VoiceThread that I plan to use in my lesson plan. The summative assessment for my unit will require students to create a PowerPoint summarizing what they have learned, then upload it into VoiceThread and add narration. My hope is this will make the project a little more engaging and fun than just doing a PowerPoint. They will also have to comment on each others’ VoiceThread, making the project interactive as well.
Here is my VoiceThread. It’s still not perfect but it’s a lot better than what I was able to do last week!

We also spent some time exploring twitter and chatzy. I’m still not a fan of using twitter in the clasroom. I feel like we should be promoting good writing skills, regardless of what grade level or subject we teach. I honestly feel like twitter goes against this goal.
I might use chatzy in the classroom in very small doses. I can’t imagine letting kids use it all day, every day. I might let them use it as a reward, at the end of class, if they’ve done all their required work. Otherwise I think it can be a huge distraction. Personally I could barely hear anything our teacher was saying today while I was on chatzy. I can’t even imagine how a 13-year-old would be able to hear me speak and chat at the same time, but then again, if that’s what they’re used to doing all the time, maybe they’d be able to.

Today we watched several videos that offered us motivation for integrating technology into our teaching. Unlike some of the other groups, I actually liked the video we were assigned for the jigsaw activity. It’s called “A Vision of K-12 Students Today” and here it is:

One thing I really enjoyed about the video was that it featured students and they were addressing us, their future teachers. The main message from them was, “Engage me or else you will lose me.” I found this to be pretty powerful. There was no actual talking on the video which might have been intentional. I felt like I was being told that talking at students is not the way to engage them. They learn best when they are allowed opportunities to actually create a product. Then not only are they learning the core subject, they are also learning critical thinking and analytical skills that they are going to need in the 21st century. Additionally, they can take ownership and pride in knowing that they have created something authentic and interesting.

The use of hands-on activities and alternative assessment are points that are discussed in a paper I wrote on my personal philosphy of education. This paper can be found under my Philosophy page.

Today we learned about unpacking standards. Here is my attempt at unpacking a 7th grade Life Science standard:

Unpacking Activity

Virginia SOL: LS.12 Students will investigate and understand relationships between ecosystem dynamics and human activity.

Unpacking Standard:
Verbs (How students will accomplish this standard): Investigate, Understand
Nouns (What students are required to know): human activities, ecosystem dynamics, relationships between the two.

Bloom’s Taxonomy:
- Define- global warming, greenhouse effect
- Identify- major causes of the greenhouse effect including anthropological sources of greenhouse gases.
- Analyze- relationship between concentration of greenhouse gases and global temperatures.
- Construct- a graph showing the relationship between years and temperature.
- Compare- results of above graph with graph of concentration of carbon dioxide over a number of years.
- Infer- relationship between the two graphs.

Essential Questions:

1. How do human actions contribute to the phenomena known as the greenhouse effect and global warming?
2. What are some of the implications of global climate change?
3. How can we alleviate the situation?

Strategies:

- Students will work on a graphic organizer in small groups and brain storm some causes of climate change.
- Students will use Excel to create graphs.
- Students will compare the graphs they generate with other graphs and infer relationships between them.
- Students will create a product summarizing the key points learned in the unit.
- Students will reflect on what they have learned and comment on each other’s projects.

Technology:
- Webspiration- for graphic organizer
- Excel- for creating graphs and analyzing data
- Class blog- for sharing projects, reflection, and sharing comments
- Voice Thread or PhotoStory- for creating the final project
- Discovery Ed- used by teacher to find educational videos
- Diigo- for sharing sites that can be used in research for project

This is a Photostory that i made in class today. I had a hard time putting narration because of a glitch with my microphone but at least I know how to do it in the future. I made another one too that I was going to use for my lesson plan but unfortunately lost it when I restarted the computer. That’s fine, though, because I will just have to challenge myself to make another product tomorrow. I was a bit overwhelmed toward the end of class today when I had only 30 minutes left and had just started the tutorial on Voicethread. I think that’s what I’m going to tackle tomorrow. When I came home I thought a while about how I can integrate that into my lesson plan and came up with some notes and images I’m going to try and include.

Trip to Hilton Head July 2009 from Nastaran Wise on Vimeo.

Day three of ED 554 was as productive as the first two. We spent a large portion of the class learning about and exploring presentation software. I’ve used PowerPoint in the past but learned about a few new tools too (Prezi, a google presentation tool, and 280slides). I chose to use PowerPoint to create an artifact for my blog. It can be viewed right here

http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dhsxnjhv_18hh7f92hb. I learned that one of the limitations of PowerPoint is that it’s very difficult to embed videos. I was, however, able to embed images with ease and am happy with the way my slides came out.

The productivity did not end there. My partner for the integrated technology project, Melissa, and I spent some time discussing our project and working on our presentation. Our project is on Personal Response Systems which can be used in classrooms to enhance learning and encourage active participation by students. Here is a link that has some good information about PRS:

http://cit.duke.edu/tools/classroom/prs.html

I enjoyed looking at the Prezi presentations made by my classmates. Here is a great one by my classmate Melissa:

http://prezi.com/129096/

I really like Melissa’s “less is more” approach because it’s similar to my own (as evidenced by my PowerPoint). I tend to think in a very linear way which makes Prezi a little hard for me to wrap my mind around. I do like that Melissa’s is simple yet informative and personal.

I look forward to learning how to tell a story with pictures during tomorrow’s class.

Today was another busy day in ED 554. I’ve learned so much stuff the past two days and am hoping I will retain some of it for when I start teaching. The neatest thing I learned how to do today was make a Wordle. Here is a link to the site that I used to make mine:http://www.wordle.net/

You can see my Wordle on my bio page. I’m very proud of it, especially since it literally took me all day to get on my page!

The debate on whether we should be required to have detailed lesson plans was very interesting. I always enjoy playing devil’s advocate and although I was technically on the affirmative side, I can definitely see how so many teachers are resistant to the idea of having to write out a detailed plan for every lesson they teach. After all, there is only so much time and too many things that a teacher has to do each day. It would be nice if most of a teacher’s time could go to delivering lessons. On the other hand, there is a lot to be said for being well-prepared and well-organized, and giving well thought- out lessons. It’s also good to have a plan in place, even if it’s necessary to veer from it from time to time.

Chapters 5 and 6 in the text gave good overviews of administrative and academic software. I think the text will be a useful reference to me once I start teaching. I particularly found the rubrics  used for grading different software helpful and easy to follow.

I had a hard time opening Inspiration but did spend some time looking through Webspiration which shares many of the same characteristics. Some of the material I saw there might be useful in the classroom. I particularly liked the notetaker, diagramming, and other organizational tools. I can see how they can be used as scaffolding for special needs students as well as for teaching organizational/note taking skills to general ed students.

On my first day of ED 554 I learned how to use Diigo and how to create a blog. These are two things I had never done before so I consider this to have been a very successful day.

The youtube video we watched about the growing role of technology in our lives was very interesting and eye-opening. I actually found it rather inspiring and thought-provoking. The class discussion that followed made me think of technology in a new light. I had previously thought of the increased use of technology in the classroom as diminishing personal relationships. However, after thinking about the topic in light of the video, I began to see the important role that technology can play in bringing people together, allowing students to collaborate and learn with their counterparts anywhere in the world and to tap a wealth of information on any given topic. here is that video:

Chapter 2 in the text offers a good overview of designing, planning, and delivering effective lessons that integrate technology. I found the checklist at the end of the chapter very helpful and in keeping with the way I process information and learn. I feel I will be able to refer to the checklist when I begin to write actual lesson plans in my future classroom.

Chapter 3 offers a general look at the use of computers in the classroom. This is a chapter that might be good for future reference but, for the most part, the information was quite basic.