At the start of this course, I thought I was pretty internet/tech savvy and that I did a pretty good job of incorporating web tools in my science classroom.  OOPS.  I guess that's why I signed up for this course in the first place, I had an inkling that I could be doing more.  Having taken an online course once before, I was already aware of one thing I wasn't doing as well as I could.  Hosting my class online!  I don't necessarily mean teaching the whole thing in an online only format as this is, but at least including online discussion.  I was doing a decent job of incorporating web tools, but that's the problem, I was doing.  I wasn't engaging my students in the work.  I had a class blog that I posted to.  Now I have created a class wiki that the students can create and then post to.  Now I know how to have my students post to the class blog and what to post to it.  I have learned that making Glogs and presenting them in class is great, but I should have been putting them on the class website for future classes to build on.  I have learned how to use Diigo, Prezi, and Jing.  I have found new uses for Google Docs.  Most of all, I have found a whole list of webtools I'd never heard of and can't wait to try. 

Most of my setting the stage post was about using calculators, but I stand by the point of my post. These tools are great!  They are TOOLS.  They are not themselves the lesson.  They are not themselves what's important.  Yes, it is important to familiarize our students to what is available for them out there on the big wide interwebs.  But I am teaching science using technology, not technology.  Again, make sure that you know why you are using something.  I chose prezi as a new favorite because it teaches the topic I want my students to learn in a more interactive, interesting way.  Key is that it teaches the topic I want my students to learn.  I like Jing (and will likely like the other programs for creating videos given time to work through them) because it allows students to showcase their work.  I love Diigo because it lets students mark-up what they are reading and share it with their classmates.  I started the wiki because it gives us a platform for creating our online community.  I looked into Moodle, and would be interested to work with it, but I think it will take a little more time to fully understand, and if I am correct it requires you to have a platform to upload whatever you create?  I don't know if my district does since I don't know what district I will be a part of!  I have found that with attention spans shortening, it is imperative we engage our students interactively.  This has been a big push in science by inquiry, but inquiry alone isn't always enough to ensure that all of our learners are learning.  Having students demonstrate their learning by supporting their arguments and showcasing their work gives them something tangible they can go back to when reviewing and something to be proud of!

Well, it was a little slow coming but I have finished my final project, well, tentatively finished dependening on comments/feedback.  I created a new wiki to use for my courses this fall.  I left it open because as of this coming friday I am officially unemployed, makes the last few days of teaching summer school that much more precious.  There is a chance that the school I was at this last year may ask me back, budget cuts and being my first year in the district not lack of teaching were the cause of my non-renewal status.  Anyway, that's a whole other thing...  I created a video showcasing my wiki using Jing, hope you like it.  I included the prezi presentation I created.  My idea for using this in my classes is that I can use my lesson on Evolution and other lessons to be created to model Prezi for my students so they can become familiar with the platform.  I will use my newfound knowledge of Jing to also demonstrate its use.  Then I will have my students narrate the presentation they create for the create an argument assignment I made (assuming I teach some form of a physics course) or a new topic to be determined.  I will have them post their creations to our wiki.  I will also have the students create pages on the wiki for each unit of study by breaking the units into smaller topics and assigning each topic to a different group as we progress through the unit.  I will post any relevant articles or websites I find to the wiki and offer extra credit for students who post interesting, relevant links.   Students will use blogs to reflect on their learning and discuss the class projects as we work on them.  And who knows where we'll go from there!

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Wiki_for_final.swf (16.07 MB)

Hmm, I have never liked the sound of my own voice recorded, but here goes nothing.  And by that I really do mean nothing.  I created a video of my prezi using Jing so that I could narrate what I did, and its too big to upload it here :(  Ok, re-recorded the Jing video to make it a little shorter, not sure if it was better as I struggled a little in my navigating through prezi, but Prezi was my tool for week 5.  My tool work week 6 was jing, and I think that wen't pretty well overall.  I was able to record a video of the goings-on of my screen and upload that video here.  I deem that a success!  A little frustrating, but that's life.  Jing could be great for the shy presenter.  Also, for round-robin style project presentations, rather than making that one kid who stayed with the poster/video/etc give the whole explanation of the project to everyone who comes around, they could start with a video of their project where they explain what they did while you watch the presentation.  Then the lone student explaner just has to answer questions.  It relieves a bit of the pressure since they did the project as a group, this lets them present it as a group, even without the whole group being present.  Also, it makes for more interesting online presentations.  Students could post what they create to the class wiki or blog and instead of just being a visual like powerpoint or prezi, it could include their whole class presentation in a more thorough, interesting format!

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Prezi_Jing_Final_Project_for_Webtools.swf (40.99 MB)

It is a whole big wide interwebs out there.  There's so much going on! So much to do, so much to learn, so much to try, so little time to do it in.  Reading the D2L conversation, I have found that most of us knew of some of the resources out there but either weren't using them to their full potential or didn't know about very many of them.  I know I have learned how to use at least 5 new tools and have learned how to better use at least 3 more.  And I'm just getting started.  I have a whole list of things to try out in the coming months!  And I'm not just going to use these in my teaching, but some of them will likely become things I use often!

Making my first Prezi, a little frustrating, but not terrible...

Tired of printing out articles to read and highlight?  A big fan of sticky notes?  I've been investigating Diigo.  At first I was a little confused on how it works, now I've got my toolbar up and running, and I think its great.  Just marked up an article in the Boston Globe on the high price of school assignments.  I can see this being a great tool when teaching research paper writing as well as doing any research projects, online collaboration, or simply highlighting important information in a link you want to share with your friends.  As in, "Can you believe this!!!

Well that explains a few of the budget cuts around the schools we're seeing this year!  Oh wait, no we won't see cuts around the schools, they will be hidden by the fact that the schools are closed!

OOPS!!! This isn't supposed to be the focus of this post.  Its hard to ignore the 600+ employees who received non-renewal notices this spring.  Anyway, Diigo is awesome.  As you can see, I have already started figuring out ways of incorporating it.  It seems pretty easy to use, and I already applied for my educator license so I can set up student groups.  Then I could have students share the articles they find with each other and share the important pieces they find within!

Blogs and Wikis can be great assets to any classroom.  I have experimented with them a bit, but mostly as a tool for me to give students an additional resource for keeping up to date with the class.  My most recent attempts can be found here and here and a little older one here.  I often overwhelm myself with these sorts of projects as I am not sure how to grade student work in a timely fashion.  Paired with lack of computer access I've always been hesitant to try to go too far with online assignments.  I've given a few things that required my students to email me their work, including their science fair projects and a group review project this year which worked out pretty well because it keep an online document going of their work in case they lost their own copies and kept them a little more responsible for deadlines, but I didn't take it to a blog or wiki as I perhaps should have.  I can see some great uses for these.  As I mentioned, review projects and science fair already - If groups create a website for their project, then the other students will have access to that as a resource and it makes the project itself more meaningful.  It will hold them to a higher level of production as it will be fairly publicly viewable and will allow more collaboration on their work.  Keeping the projects online from year to year may result in high quality work as the years pass.  Rather than recreating the wheel each year, students will build on their predessesors work going into much more depth than could be possible in one year alone.  And as for the debate Blog VS Wiki, I don't get it, why should it be one or the other?  Why not one within another.  Wiki for creating group projects, blogs for working on essays or for reflections.  PS: not a great recording, but I want to thank my neighbors for providing me some great study music:

Sounds_of_studying.wma

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Sounds_of_studying.wma (232 KB)

The generate an argument activity is a great way for students to go through the whole scientific method: Identify the proplem/Develop a question, Conduct Research, Form a hypothesis, Collect Data, Draw a Conclusion, Support your findings without necessarily realizing that this is what they are doing.  In general argument is one of the most fundamental writing techniques we give our students.  Any time they want something or answer a question, they are generating an argument.  But, "Because I said so" is not enough support.  Many of us fail to model good arguments in our day-to-day teaching.  I know I catch myself doing it sometimes and so do my students.  They ask why we are learning something or why something is and if they are unsatisfied by my answer they will start to argue.  So I have learned to always support any answer I give with my full reasoning, well maybe not every answer, but I try to judge when it is necessary and never give one word answers, well unless that kid is obnoxious then its "no" no matter what (Just kidding).  However, with all the modeling in the world, kids will never learn this oh so valuable skill unless they practice it.  And when asked why its important, a good example is getting parent approval to go out with friends on a school night.  IF you just say you want to and that is your whole argument, the likely answer is no.  But if you are able to develop a sound argument to support your claim, like it will help make you a well adjusted human being, you can finish and discuss your homework together, etc, the answer may still be no, but maybe not!  You never know till you try.  And when your potential boss asks why he should hire you instead of the 15 other kids like you, you want to be able to stand out from the crowd and really express why you are the one to choose!

So here is my generating an argument activity where high school freshmen are asked whether high priced sports cars are really worth it based on analysis of performance (mass, speed, acceleration, force) and base price and they take it a step further by creating a car of their own!

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Spadoni_Generating_an_Argument.rtf (63 KB)

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Spadoni_Generating_an_Argument.rtf (63 KB)

After reading: Acquiring Online Data for Scientific Analysis by Kathy Cabe Trundle I have a few good ideas for how I could incorporate online data sets in my classroom (I have already done this a bit, like using the periodic table data since most of the periodic table elements are outside our capacity to test personally within a high school science classroom).  For example, my physical science class typically does a speed/acceleration activity called walk/jog/run (many schools do some form of this project) where one student is assigned to run 100m, one to jog 100m, one to walk 100m, and one to alternate running and walking as best they can every 20 meters.  The rest of the class is positioned every 5, 10, or 20 m depending on how many students you have with a stopwatch to record the person's time at each position.  The class culls their data and create position vs time, speed vs time, and acceleration vs time graphs.  It would be interesting to have the students who see themselves as the "fastest" race against each others times and then compare their data to published data of speed trends in racing and speed vs age trends.  Another idea for use in Chemistry is to test the water quality in the school and compare it to that found in the student's homes, having them each bring in a sample of their home drinking water.  We could take it further by also comparing water quality after various treatments like putting it through Brita filters and against bottled water.  Then we could use online data about water quality around the US to see how Boston Water matches up!

I like the idea of using online data to expand the range of what we can investigate in our classes.  But at the same time, I feel like if there isn't some kind of hands-on or home-hitting meaning to the data then students won't be any more interested in this than in anything else we come up with.  They will see it as an exercise in excel.  Some may find it mildly interesting, in a oh yeah that's cool, but those are the same students that find most of what we do interesting in that same manner.  So using online data is great because it gives us access to way more information than students can collect in the hs lab, but we must make it interesting for them.  I had a lot of foreign students this year, another idea would be to compare some piece of information from each of my students' birthplaces.  This could be as simple as temperature/weather/climate data.  We could track data in our own classroom easily enough, and compare it against the cities in Haiti, Jamaica, Peurto Rico, Vietnam, Bolivia, Russia, Florida, Washington State (my home!) everywhere we come from.