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.