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.