Guiding Principles Revisit

My initial Guiding Principles are copied below:
Then:
1. I plan to teach students more how to use the internet before I assign them an assignment that requires them to use the internet for research. I think I take for granted what they already know, and I need to make sure that all students know how to appropriately use this vast resource.

2. I intend to better teach how to use data collection probes and software. I need to make sure students know their purpose and function before we use them with a lab. I want to write more labs for my students to incorporate this great tool.

3. I want to make better use of an LCD projector besides showing video clips, presenting ppts, working through worksheets together with it on the whiteboard, and presenting student ppts.

4. I plan to utilize more online databases such as those listed in "Partnership for 21st Century Skills". I think that my students would learn a lot from analyzing real-time data.

5. I would like to use our laptops more for assessment purposes such as online quizzes. This will prepare students for the direction many assessments may be going, at least for many college courses' assessments.

6. I want to incorporate what I am learning about blogs and twitter into my teaching so students can learn how to share their ideas and thoughts about particular subjects. I want these tools to help them become better communicators of science.

7. Overall, as mentioned in my previous blog, I want technology to help students learn how to think and analyze better so they can be better problem solvers.

Now:
I still have the same thinking about teaching with technology. Now, though, I have a variety of tools to use instead of primarily computer simulations and LoggerPro on laptops. I really do hope our lap tops are still functioning this year and the tech dpt did not take them away over the summer (happened before). I still strongly believe that I want the technology to help my students become better problem solvers and what I learned from this course will really help in this aspect. Monotony will be gone from my classroom. Students will be more engaged in not only the lab part of my class, but the communication part as well. I struggled with this part over the years, but I now am more confident I can have more post lab work completed by students. Middle school is about the ooohs and aahhs about science, and the tools I learned here will help them be a part of this. Social networking and learning from each other will be a large part of my future classroom.

D2L Discussion

The discussion this week through DSL was typical of these MSSE classes. Everyone made great points about how helpful this class was in regards to learning new web tools. We will be carrying a lot of new ideas back with us when school begins, and most of us seem very excited to implement these fun, innovative tools. I like that the discussion groups were kept small. This made it easy to read through all comments and make appropriate comments when needed. Creativity was a topic brought up by several classmates. These web tools will really allow the students to be creative and to allow them to express their ideas in other ways than just typical classroom discussions and Q & A. Several of us shared ideas about how to use these tools as alternatives to general lab reports.

One of the great things I love about teaching is learning from other teachers. This is a profession where others are so helpful and selfless. You can't say that about a lot of other professions. We are all here in this class to help us become better teachers so our students can have a really great education. I really enjoyed reading other classmates' blogs, comments, and posts on the wiki and D2L. From our discussion this week, it is clear that others here feel the same way and are very thankful for the power of the wiki!

Week 6

I am trying to finish all requirements for this course this week, so I did not experiment with anything new as far as web tools go. I did set up a class wiki which took up a lot of time since it was a new learning process. I am anxious to see how this will work with my classes and if I can keep up with it. I also worked with Glogster a little more to tweak a poster, and I plan on showing a science safety poster with this tool when I can access my classroom and take pictures of equipment and safety features. I also created a short Prezi presentation about classroom expectations which I embedded into my wiki. I did work with Google docs some more and am having some difficulty with keeping Google calendar embedded in my wiki, I posted about this in previous post.

I have tried to add most of the links for the web tools listed on this class wiki to Diigo, but I may have missed some. As others have commented, I hope this class wiki stays up some after next week so we can continue to access it.

Final Project

My final project is a class wiki designed for both my 7th and 8th grade science classes. I also have links to the 7th grade blog and the 8th grade blog. I intend to start slow to prevent myself and my students from getting overwhelmed with all of this. I will keep up with the wiki more frequently by adding assignments, announcements, and due dates. Parents and students will be able to check in and be caught up with what is going on and be able to add particular items and/or ask questions. I want to use the blogs less frequently at the beginning, and use it as a discussion place for items that do not get much attention in class.

I am having problems keeping the google calendar visible when you click on "Class Calendar". Sometimes the real calendar shows, but most times it is the Google Calendar log in page that shows up, so I re-embed...
If anyone has an answer to what is happening, I would really appreciate it!!

http://knodelscience.wikispaces.com/

I will be in Yellowstone for a class most of this coming week, so if anyone has some constructive criticism this weekend I would welcome it! Thanks!

Knodel Science wiki

More Web Tool Exploration

I have been working through the Top 20 Web Tool Countdown this week, and this is what I have discovered so far. ( I will put all on one post so hopefully it will not be too much text to sort through.)

I think Worlde can be used for some vocabulary fun. I just typed in some basic words to see how it works. I think it could be used as an intro slide in presentations.

title="Wordle: Physics"> src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/2233961/Physics"
alt="Wordle: Physics"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">


I played with Prezi some, but I did not create anything to post. I did see a presentation in a class today that used it and it was really catchy. The professors were pretty impressed. A student made a comment that students fall asleep with the boring bulleted items in ppts, and I think this would definitely keep students' attention.

I used Wallwisher to experiment if I could post a scientific question and have people respond to it. I created a simple one asking to predict the weather. If I get people to add "a sticky note" I may be able to see if I could post questions like this to my students.



I checked out Blabberize yesterday during a lunch break from a class but ran out of time to create something. Luckily, classmates used it in a presentation today to "blabberize" a fish. It was really cool. I think it is a creative way to get students' attention.

Experimented with ToonDooSpaces but soon realized I needed to move on. So, I went to Xtranormal, created a movie on velocity, but could not publish it because it cost money! Darn...I really thought that this would be a fun way for students to demonstrate their knowledge of a concept.

Finally, I opened the link for Glogster on the countdown and saw the author used a Glogster poster as her wiki homepage and had links for handouts, calendar, etc from there. This got me thinking about maybe setting my wiki up like this...hmmmm.

Blogs and Wikis

As I work through this course, I am feeling more confident that setting up a wiki for my classes would work quite well. I will follow the advice from this week's readings and practice setting one up on my own, adding items myself, and then gradually having students add to it. I also learned this week that I have the ability to set up usernames and passwords and that students may change their passwords when they are logged in. I like the idea that wikis allow all students to participate and that it helps build confidence in communicating thoughts and ideas. I also read, do not remember where right now, that the teacher noticed a substantial increase in the confidence levels of students sharing ideas and participating in class discussions more after utilizing wikis. The ability to upload videos, slides, and pictures on the wiki will be beneficial. Of the wikis I looked through this week, the most appealing ones were those with these tools. I think students will be more motivated to log on to see what is new if they know cool videos and pictures may be updated. I think the following link is a great resource about wikis and other cool science ed info.
http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/middle-school-math-science/2008/08/26/teacher-tools-that-integrate-technology-wikis/


I would like to have my students reflect through blogging as well. However, I would like to keep the blogging and wiki on one site so I do not get loaded down trying to keep up with it all. I would like students to post comments on particular topics, ideas or questions on assignments, and questions about concepts we do not cover with great detail in class. I would also like them to read through blogs from professional science sites, like NASA, to keep up with current news events in science.

More Web Tool Exploration

On Sunday, I spent several hours experimenting with Audacity. I edited a podcast about rescuing sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico. I then found images that would be great to make into a slideshow. I tried for a long time to get these two to work together but was unsuccessful. I do see the benefits of Audacity and am looking forward to using it for editing particular selections.
Other than this tool and Create a Graph, which I previously blogged about, I have spent most of the week writing our midterm reflection and exploring the numerous data sets online. However, I did find time to research Edmodo some after reading about it from other classmates posts. Also, I am in the process of learning more about VoiceThread. I have played with it some, but my attempts are not ready to be posted here with this blog.

Generating an Argument

I believe the readings on Generating an Argument and the the Instructional Model by Sampson and Grooms will be very useful in my future teaching. I have already experimented with a lesson that follows the model some (and never knew it at the time) and had great success with it. The only thing I did not include was a poster or other choice to display the conclusion, evidence, and rationale, as suggested by the authors in their "The Science Teacher" article. (I posted the assignment link on the class wiki prior to this post.) The students loved the round-robin format of gathering evidence and ideas from other students and sharing their thoughts/ideas/work. I do a lot of labs with my middle school students and spend much of my time searching and writing new ones. Using online data will be helpful in planning/writing labs in which I do not have appropriate materials. Also, students will see real-time data and feel more involved with real science. During a lot of labs, students have so much fun collecting the data and carrying out the experiment, that they do not think about what they are collecting, why they are doing it, and what the data means. By having access to online data, students will immediately start the thinking and questioning process which is so critical.
I have not found a data set that I would like to use for our assignment this week, but some data ideas that I would like to use during the school year will be for climate data (temps, precip, snowpack, etc), predator/prey data, and motion data (still thinking about this). I am still exploring my thoughts for my classroom activity and spending time searching online data sites. As I come to some good ones, I will post them, just as classmates are doing. This is very helpful!

Prepare for the Worst, Because Solar Storms Are About to Get Ugly

Prepare for the Worst, Because Solar Storms Are About to Get Ugly

Create a Graph

This was very easy and very fast. I used data from a project this winter.
I currently have students graph with LoggerPro, by hand, and with Excel. Now I can teach them how to do it online with this program. It is very user friendly.

screencast for previous post

Screencaptures and Jing

I made an audio screencapture of Jing that I would use to introduce a lesson on elk in Yellowstone National Park. I guess it would be an anticipatory set to the lesson I used last year from The Science Teacher titled "Elk Habitat: A case study of scientific inquiry" found in the Nov 09 issue.

Digital Storytelling, Copyrights, and Chapter 2 Reflection

Learning about digital storytelling this week really got me thinking about what I can do with them this coming school year. Even though the Science in Plain English examples were made by younger elementary students, my mind went into plan mode and began to think about what middle school students could do. One of the readings this week mentioned that this digital storytelling tool makes the students learn their material well in order to "tell" the story. In my own life, I learn so much more about concepts by teaching them than I have from just reading/writing about them. I think that using this tool for those hard to learn concepts like the Nitrogen Cycle or the Carbon Cycle would be great. I can also see my 8th graders working through digital storytelling to share what they learned about acids and bases. I think that having this tool replace some lab reports would be fun for the students as well. All required parts of the lab report could be told: problem, hypothesis, materials, procedures, data, analysis, and conclusion. I am foreseeing great creativity here! a mixture of colorful drawings and actual pictures of the process and outcomes. Actually, I have been in "teacher-mode" the past two hours regarding a severe thunderstorm that passed through here. As I watched it move in, hit, and leave, I wondered how I could make this into a digital story. Fortunately I was home but did not want to go outside to take pictures with all the wind and hail. I did save some hail stones and put them in the freezer, so maybe I will create a simple digital story about the effects of a wind and hail storm and post them here...stay tuned.

I read a lot of information about copyright this week and I can't get the following question out of my head...why doesn't my school spend a short amount of time during our first inservice day before school officially starts to go over what is new and what teachers can and cannot do. I think most undergrad teacher ed programs require a technology class. I don't remember learning about most of what I read over the past few days in that class. Our school technology teacher doesn't even go over this info with our students. Yikes! How many of you out there have had training on this from your tech dept at your school?
The Creative Commons site does have a lot of great pictures and I think it will be a great teaching tool to show students how to properly use and cite sources. I am curious to see if our district allows this site or if it is blocked due to the ability to blog and add comments.

And finally....I will keep this part shorter...Chapter 2 gives us many useful ideas how to incorporate what we are learning in this class to our lessons. I won't give in to the details about what I highlighted and read, (round 2 of storm is here and I want to hurry in case power goes out) but I am anxious to play with some items. I use Vernier for data collection, and I can't wait to do some screen capturing and better teaching with this program. Also, I want to try a virtual tree/leaf collection at the beginning of the school year. And...showing pictures and videos of what is safe and what is not safe in the lab is something I really would like to put together this summer so I can show it the first week of school...ok so thunder really loud so I am quitting and hopefully met my reflection requirement...maybe I will venture out and take some pics for a digital story...

Experimenting with embedded items

Playing with Glogster

So I finally got my internet problem fixed. It turns out that the old, unused, hardwired telephone that is in my house was slowing down the internet...who knew! Now I am able to access everything for this class and have some more fun.

I have been experimenting with Glogster for the past hour or two, yikes, and this is one thing I made. http://knodelscience.glogster.com/summer1

I can really see how students can use this to create posters to summarize a research project or other assignment. I should have made one that I could use the first day of school, but decided to do something related to summer.

One thing that did not work was embedding the poster here. I will keep reading and trying.

Week 2 Adventures

I have not been successful at viewing the videos posted on our wiki. They take forever to load and once they begin, they play pause play pause...enough to drive me crazy. I do have a professional coming tomorrow to check things out, hopefully it will fix things and I don't have to call the internet tech people any more...

I have been successful with some other tools:

Piknik was fun to edit photos. The eagle pic above is one of the pics I worked with. If I use this in the classroom, I would definitely have to set a time limit for the kids...It is way too easy to get carried away with the different options and spend too much time here...This is actually true with all these tools! I did have trouble with making the collage. I will experiment more with that another time.

Five Stories with Flickr is also something I played with. I can easily see this being used for me as a teacher sharing steps to a lab or demo. Also, I could see students including this in their lab reports.

I have created a Diigo account and am anxious for more time to work with this. I am thrilled about the highlighting feature...how many times have I opened up a website and had to reread to find what I needed. This will be especially helpful when I continue lit searching for my capstone project. I have not played with Delicious, but I intend to in order to compare/contrast with Diigo.

Also this week, I set up Google Reader and learned how to organize files from a student's blog post, looked at a few simulations, and played with Google Earth more (addicting!). I have actually used Google Earth for an ecology class and in the classroom some. Again, I hope to learn more each time I open it!

Ok, so now I really must leave here and write my research paper for another class...or not! Exploring this class is a lot more fun!

Science & Literacy

I cannot assume that all of my students can read well. Even though I teach science, I cannot depend on the language arts teachers to give them all the reading skills they need to be successful in each class. Science is focused on problem solving and our future depends on good problem solvers. The "Science & Literacy Tools for Life" article did a great job of giving me some guidelines for science literacy.

Just like students who know the expectations of how to behave in a classroom, they must know the performance expectations of literacy. This is something I never thought about before, and I feel ashamed about it. My middle school will be working in teams, or pods, for the first time next year, so I really want to take advantage of this and work closely with my other team members to work on these performance expectations. It actually sounds pretty overwhelming.

After reading the explicit teaching strategy examples in the article, I am really hoping I can get a good set of textbooks for next year. (mentioned in previous blog). I feel I can use these guidelines effectively. I don't want to even think about photocopying reading selections.

Finally, the metacognitive strategy written for lab reports got me thinking about how I have my students write their labs. One difference between what I have my students do and what is listed is I have my students write numbered steps for the procedures (what they are going to do or what they did do to test their hypothesis). I will now think about incorporating narratives instead. I really like that strategy!

Core Curriculum

I am the middle school science representative for our district's curriculum team and I was first introduced to these new core standards this past spring. I did not really learn many details about them specifically and with the end of the school year winding down I did not spend the time to research them further on my own. This week's reading, however, have given me an opportunity to look into them further.

Schools today have a lot of pressure on them for their students scoring high on standardized tests. We follow our state standard's as much as possible and try to teach as much content as we can each school year. When students take our state tests, we bite our nails and are nervous about how they do. When the scores finally come back, we finally breathe and give a sigh of relief that we made AYP. However, what about those students who did not do so well? Were they not taught the content or did they simply not understand some questions?

In our state, we have the ability to pull up individual student's scores and questions. If Jane missed question 10 and 90% of the other students got it correct, we need to know why she missed it. By reading the question and her response we can figure out if she guessed or basically did not understand the question. Our tests assume that all students have the skills to read and understand what each question is asking. However, that is not the case. For example, I took a quiz today in a workshop that was part of a behavior conference I am attending this week. There were only 5 questions, but I only fully understood 2 of the questions. I simply did not understand the wording and some vocabulary. This really got me thinking about how we need to be teaching students how to effectively read. Yes, it will take more work on our part as teachers to implement reading skills into our lessons, but we need to remember our teaching goals. My primary goal is to teach students how to think and problem solve. Looking over the 10 science standards from the core curriculum site for each level, all have something to do with my goal.

One trouble point in implementing these literacy standards is resources. I currently do not teach out of a text. I do some reading strategies with my 7th and 8th graders, but I know I need to do A LOT more. My colleague and I have gone through the process of getting new books for our 7th graders but have not heard back whether they can be ordered or not. Other schools may be in the same situation; they know how expensive and time consuming it is to photocopy particular readings.

Guiding Principles for Teaching with Technology

I have been thinking about my guidelines throughout this week and I think I have them somewhat organized so I can now share them.

1. I plan to teach students more how to use the internet before I assign them an assignment that requires them to use the internet for research. I think I take for granted what they already know, and I need to make sure that all students know how to appropriately use this vast resource.

2. I intend to better teach how to use data collection probes and software. I need to make sure students know their purpose and function before we use them with a lab. I want to write more labs for my students to incorporate this great tool.

3. I want to make better use of an LCD projector besides showing video clips, presenting ppts, working through worksheets together with it on the whiteboard, and presenting student ppts.

4. I plan to utilize more online databases such as those listed in "Partnership for 21st Century Skills". I think that my students would learn a lot from analyzing real-time data.

5. I would like to use our laptops more for assessment purposes such as online quizzes. This will prepare students for the direction many assessments may be going, at least for many college courses' assessments.

6. I want to incorporate what I am learning about blogs and twitter into my teaching so students can learn how to share their ideas and thoughts about particular subjects. I want these tools to help them become better communicators of science.

7. Overall, as mentioned in my previous blog, I want technology to help students learn how to think and analyze better so they can be better problem solvers.

Setting the Stage Reflection

I seemed to be the last person to get a personal computer, cell phone, laptop computer, or anything else that had to do with technology. Now I am trying to be as up to date with technology as I can, but many of my students seem to be a step ahead of me. I hope to change that by this course teaching me new skills.

I currently use laptops computers in my classroom for research and project preparations as well as with Vernier and data collection probes to collect and then analyze data. I also use simulations and online labs whenever I can as well. One thing I learned this week from another course I am taking is that we need to teach students how to think and solve problems. As the readings emphasized, technology is everywhere, and it will be changing and improving as time goes on. Students need to be able to have the skills to handle these changes. Even though the data collection devices my students are using now will be more advanced when they get to college, they will have had the skills of how to set up and operate the equipment and understand what data the equipment is providing.

The technology can only do so much, however. I as the teacher need to be able to not only teach them how to use the tech, but to go beyond the hardware and look at the numbers, graphs, and other outputs. I need to teach these kids how to interpret and communicate their results. They need to THINK about what the data is telling them. They are building confidence about working with technology each time they open up a Webquest, simulation, lab, or set the temperature probe in the test tube of solution. This confidence will be carried with them in the future, so that when they open a fancy high tech computer with high tech probes for the first time in the year 2016, they will be able to focus more on analyzing and problem solving. The future of our world depends on the minds of our students and we as teachers need to teach in a manner that keeps our kids ahead in the game, not lagging behind. Technology is the key for this to happen. It also gives them access to places to share their thoughts and ideas. Isn't communication a huge part of science? Let's teach them how to use the technology, whether it is through blogs, twitter, videos, and others, appropriately so they can communicate effectively!

Introduction of myself

Hey everyone!

I am Shannon Knodel and I live in Bozeman, Mt. I have taught all areas of 7-12 grade science and am currently teaching middle school science in Belgrade and Love it!! I was nervous at first about teaching this age group full time, but I love their enthusiasm for learning and they make each day exciting and rewarding. This is my first time being a blog and twitter user so I am looking forward to learning more about them as well as other areas of tech in this class. I do not have a lot of time this week to make my blogspot look great, so hopefully in a week I will have my page reflect more about me and make it more unique. I am in the MSSE program here at MSU and am fortunate to be able to just walk to the on-campus courses! In my free time, I love to be doing anything and everything outdoors, especially hiking, fly fishing, and exploring new places!

First time using blogs! Hope I can get everything figured out ok.