Multimedia Website

This final project took quite some time to accomplish. The learning curve was straight uphill for me, but now all I can think is how great it would be to make a website with all the bells and whistles. The free website on weebly.com is fine but it would be better with video, student pod casts and a student Google Earth link. The most challenging piece of this was conceptualizing how a website works and how students would navigate through it.  This is something I will most certainly give more thought to as I move forward in my tech education. Uploading files was also a challenge at times. You cannot upload a document with an embedded picture.  I really want my students to make websites now. I am thinking about using this means as a form of assessment. Students  really connect with the ethics piece of this unit and students could work in small groups or individually to create a website which raises awareness of conservation issues.

Here is the link to my website

Laurel School Class Trip Video

I have chosen not to post this video to protect the privacy of my students
 
This video will serve as an example from which future classes can create their own trip videos. The students could be grouped by district (Theater, Gateway, North Coast, Government) and a series of videos could be produced. Our class trip serves as a springboard from which students learn about the past, present and future of Cleveland. The curriculum aligns with grades 6-8 social studies benchmarks (economics, citizenship, rights, responsibilities) and grade 7 content standards in geography (location, places and regions, human environmental interaction and movement). 

The making of this video was challenging. I scrapped the tripod five minutes into the trip because I needed to attend to students; consequently, some frames are a bit shaky. I used a Flip video recorder which was easy. The challenge came when trying to get windows movie maker to recognize the flip files (MP4). Ultimately I found a free converter to solve the problem. The Flip video movie maker is not as versatile as windows movie maker so I really had to do that. Much of my storyboard went out the window too. What was I thinking with all that narrative? The sound recorded while taking the video sometimes competes with my narration. I played with the volume of the narration but that did not solve the problem completely. Making this video has given me the confidence to teach my students how to do it but I think I need to learn some Mac software as well.

Evidence of Network Participation

My participation in this class took various forms. I learned from classmates through discussions in class. I also followed the blogs of several classmates. I have included a screencast of my replies to classmates.  Mike Carlin let me know that my podcast was not working properly and here is a screen capture of those comments. I also participated in the video discussion board seen in the screenshot below.

K-12 Wiki Lesson or Project

The K-12 wiki spaces was new to me at the start of this class. I have used this resource several times to find engaging technology lessons.I really liked the seventh grade Create Your Own Rocks activity. I chose to post my artifact excel spreadsheet and artifact analysis file.

Podcast

I am not used to listening to my own voice recording. My students love hearing their own voices, over and over and over again. The idea that the entire world could listen to me...yikes! A global audience to my 13-year old girls is exciting, engaging and motivating. I guess it is Immigrant vs. Native but I am totally on board with them, scary as it is. Podcasting could be used by students to share what they have done in school with parents. Podcasts could be placed on the school's website and students could take turns throughout the year sharing what they are doing in each subject.  In the science classroom, podcasting could be used to share observations, experimental results, or analysis. I could even see my students doing a podcast of a debate which focuses on some bio-ethical issue such as designer babies. Podcasting could also be used to "go back in time" and stand witness to some historical event as a reporter. During my unit on Earthquakes, my students create earthquake resistant buildings to test on our shake table. They could create a podcast that includes each step in the engineering process, beginning with problem identification and moving through design, testing, and redesign. The podcasts could be shared with other classes, students at other schools, structural engineers, parents, or anybody.

Here is my sample podcast.

Screencast

I used to believe that my students knew more about technology than I ever would. I now realize they only know more about social networking than I do. That being said, I think the best way to learn technology is by doing it and then trying to share it/teach it to somebody else. In the classroom, I would incorporate screencasts as a way for students to demonstrate how to use any of the Web 2.0 tools. I would first introduce several applications such as Skype, Animoto, Googledocs, Picasa, or Goanimate. Students could pair up and learn about one of the applications and then create a screencast demonstrating how that application may be used. It would be beneficial to store all the student-made screencasts and use that library of knowledge for all students, especially the younger grades. I prefer Screencast-O-Matic because it allows for clearer views of the web pages.

Here is a sample of my screencast showing how to access the Laurel homework page.

Google Earth Tour Ring of Fire

Here is my tour of the Ring of Fire


Students love Google Earth especially if you let them find their own house first! There are so many layers to this program; it could be used for any subject. I teach earth science during the first part of the school year and I made this Ring of Fire tour as an example from which my students could create a Plate Tectonic Tour. The student version would include an example of a divergent boundary, transform boundary and also a convergent boundary. Each stop would include informative links and a photograph showing associated features such as mountains, faults, volcanoes, et. I often integrate with the humanities teachers and right now they are looking at how the Western Reserve was settled. Students could use google earth to document the journey of settlers moving from New England to Ohio. They could take on the persona of a child, or adult on the journey and at each stop they could write about what they are seeing, feeling, eating, etc. They could incorporate pictures or scans of their own drawings. Perhaps they could find or create pictures of household items, wagons, dress or animals important to the journey. I think this virtual journey is a nice alternative for those students who do do not want to make a hard copy journal.

Webquest

I made a web quest for my students to use during our unit on Plate Tectonics. Once they go through this web quest and become familiar with the format, they will create their own web quests later in the year when we study ethical issues in genetics. I will divide the class into four groups and have each group choose an issue such as genetically modified foods, cloning, gene testing, or genetic information privacy/genetic discrimination. Each group will have to create an objective and balanced web quest that demonstrates multiple viewpoints on the issue. Student web quests will also include a personal position statement based on evidence and logical reasoning.   I would like to see students create surveys and discussion forums to link to their web quests as well.

WEB 2.0

Each seventh grade student chooses a topic for her science journal and deepens her understanding of this topic throughout the year. An entry includes an article, summary, new words defined, new learning, three questions and a creative response. All I had to do was mention Glogster and Go Animate and my students were all over it. Right now I have two students who have ongoing Glogs filled with experiments and videos. I have also created a wikiprojects section on my grade 7 science homework page where students can upload videos, Glogs and other multimedia. The following is an example of a Student Glog.  Another student used Go Animate to create a cartoon about whale evolution. The content was great but she was completely focused on those bouncing rabbits.

Archaeology Quiz Grade 7

I do not generally give multiple choice assessments, but students enjoy taking them as part of a review session or game. I can see using this tool as a way to review for tests and quizzes but I would ask my students to create the questions and the quiz. This activity would fit nicely into our unit on Plate Tectonics. I would organize the class into three or four groups and ask each group to create a quiz on one of the following: Plate Boundaries, Characteristics of the Earth's Interior Layers, Convection Currents in the Mantle, Earthquakes and Volcanoes. Each group could give a quiz to the rest of the class and in turn, take the quizzes made by the other groups. I am also using online quizzes to help students internalize concepts in science reading. Instead of answering end of chapter/section questions (boring!) I had my students work in small groups to create several challenging quiz questions. Each group added their questions to the class quiz. When complete, the class took the quiz together. Each group is guaranteed to get their own questions correct.

Update: I had my students read a section of their science book on convection currents in the mantle and make a class quiz. They loved doing this and trying to stump their classmates. Check it out

Personal Learning Network

Google Docs Lesson 2

I teach a STEM class and one of our activities is to build a shelter while stranded on a tropical island. All three groups will use the same materials (12 three-meter long logs; one plane wing fragment 2.5 m x 5m; a six-meter length of rope and a bucket of mud approximately .5 cubic meter). I want the students to view and give constructive feedback on each others' design plans. Once the groups have completed their sketches, they will take a picture of their design and upload the image to GoogleDocs in the document files I have created for them. Students will preview, and constructively comment on all designs. Here is a sample

In reality this did not work at all, probably due to the fact that I did not prepare well from a technological standpoint. I invited the students to googledocs and many had to register (all were 13). Several students ran into issues registering. I labeled the googledocs files in a way that was confusing for the students so when a few did get to google docs they did not know where to go. I had one camera but the pictures were not very clear and the directions for downloading their photos was not helpful. Then the internet went down in the school. I stopped the process after 30 minutes of frustration. Next time I would send explicit directions along with the invite to googledocs. There were too many steps not to have each one clearly labeled in at least on place, like the invitation.

Online Photo Album and Slideshow

I am experimenting with Animoto and it seems very easy. I played with some pictures of students doing a Mentos-Diet Coke experiment and used those to create a sample for my students. Check out this link  and the photos in Picasa. I could have my students record their experiments, field trips etc. this way. I do an activity with Skittles candy to model the process of radioactive decay in rocks during our unit on geologic time. Each trial shows the parent atoms (red Skittles)decreasing, while the daughter atoms (yellow Skittles)increase. Students could take digital photos of each trial and create a slide presentation that captures the change from parent atoms to daughter atoms. Girls could embed their slide shows on our homework page as I have done below.



Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Google Docs Lesson #1

Each year at Laurel School, seventh grade students participate in a mock archaeological excavation. The unit is completely integrated (English, ethics, math, dance, art, science) and students collect, record, measure and analyze artifacts just as professional archaeologists do. This year I want to incorporate technology, so I made a Google Docs spreadsheet to record the artifact types and frequencies in each excavation unit. Students will be able to enter their own data and see the data collected by others in the class. I will also have students use the graphing feature to display artifact type and frequency across the site. I will get to this project during the third week in September.

The students entered their artifact counts in the googledocs Excel page I created. Then I asked each group to make a chart of their artifact concentrations. Not every group ended up doing this as we ran short on time. Next year I will set this up way in advance. Next year I will invite every student to my googledocs page during the first week of school so I don't have to worry about it. The Excel toolbar looks very different in Excel Googledocs and the Chart feature is buried in "Insert."

Here is an example of a student chart.

Glogster is fun!

My grade 7 students mentioned this today when we talked about Blogs.   Check out this link.

First Class First Blog

Hi everyone,
I teach grade 7 science at Laurel School and I am looking for new ways to get my students excited about science, technology, engineering and math.