Week 8 Thing 20

Wow--Class 2.0 has a ton of resources. I like the fact that it is also a place to network with other teachers who are "in the trenches" and can give feedback and ideas. The live workshops may also be something to check out later. I've enjoyed learning about the amazing tools in web 2.0 but feel somewhat overwhelmed. So..this is a long-term learning process I think. Class 2.0 will be of help there. the only thing I didn't like about the site is that it's awfully busy so I will access it only when I have time to sift through the massive amounts of information.

As for Traveler IQ, i stopped the Amazing Race flag one and switched to the U.S. Did much better!

Thing 15

December 15th, I was able to take video of the results of an experiment for my biology class. I could plug it into my laptop and show the video to my students--which they thought was very cool-- but could not get it to load at all to manipulate it under Windows moviemaker. I have since discovered that I did not have the Any video conveter software and need a work order to be put in order to get it. So...I will revisit this when that happens. I will probably added voice to the video asking and then answering questions about the results.

Week 8 thing 19

I "flew" to a prefecture in Tokyo where I lived some years ago (the year shall go nameless). It's called Nakano and I found the subway station where I used to get off to walk to my apartment. I then flew all over the U.S. visiting my siblings and mother! I can see this being a "wow" tool to show students a global perspective on a particular issue. For example, in science, as we talk about habitat loss in environmental science and endangered species, we could 'travel' to the region where the species are endangered just to give a better sense visually and making the content more relevant to students' lives.

Week 8 Thing 18

Slideshare is great. Saves a lot of time if you find a slideshow that fits exactly the info you need. The one I chose is one on population ecology. It is a good, basic but entertaining slide show presentation of factors which affect population density. See below:

Population Ecology Intro

View more presentations from itamarita1984.

Week 7 Thing 17

I added a subscription to a science podcast called Science on the Wild Side. It would be great to refer students to Google Reader and give them a choice of reading or listening to an article about a content-related topic. For students who are not great readers and better audiologic learners and who have their Ipods attached to their ears at all times, this might be the way to go. There are many resources out there. Pretty impressive.

Week 7 Thing 16

I posted a video from You Tube showing immune cells at work. I chose the video because the graphics are amazing and students these days are used to being wowed visually! I can see video postings as being very useful for library sites to help students navigate through information. This generation couldn't use a library catalogue to save their lives. Might as well get comfortable with technology tools that students are far more likely to access.

One thing I don't like about youTube is that it takes time to sift through the thousands of videos that are posted in order to find just the right one.

Below is the video:

Week 4 thing 11

TagCrowd and Wordle are both applications that provide a visual "cloud" of words that is created by the writer. TagCrowd is a "web application for visualizing word frequencies in any user-supplied text" while Wordle is a "toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes."

I created a Wordle on an article from one of the journals on my RSS feed and posted it on Delicious as a bookmark. Success!

I could see this being used as a tool by students in presenting a research project or at the beginning or end of a unit as an antipatory activity or closing activity.

Week 4 Thing 10

Delicious would be great to create a set of bookmarks for research projects. I explored some of the science-related ones and noted how they were tagged.

Week 3 thing 9

I created a Twitter account and will follow a select few.

Week 3 Thing 8

I commented on Web 2.0 Immigrant regarding kymn's comments about wanting to better model and teach students about copyrights because I have to get better at this topic myself. I am too careless, admittedly, with using images and what. Given the many new tools I will have available through Web 2.0, it is even more important that I get this issue straight.
See my blog on her blog:

Week 3 Thing 7

I created a google reader account and subscribed to multiple science journal RSS feeds. I love this tool because it saves so much time that we would otherwise have to spend surfing or read ourselves. This way I have quick links to relevant articles that I can then quickly give my students access to.

Week 6 Thing 14

Voice Thread is pretty awesome. I voice and text commented on one of the pictures of the classroom. I created a voice thread giving instructions on one of the worksheets in biology and then posted both a link as well as imbedded it into pages on my class wiki. I could think of numerous ways to use voice thread: having students make observations of a picture, video or article relevent to content; creating their own group projects, posting lectures and notes for students who are absent or for review, giving instructions on assignments or even on how to navigate the class wiki, blog, etc.

Week 2 Thing 6

I created a glog (not a good one--with flying penguins).

Week 2 Thing 5

the FD toys is lots of fun. In doing a mini-lesson on lab safety, I thought this would be fun to use.

Week 2 Thing 4

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fortphoto/3423535319/

I liked this photo because my husband and I have recently taken up astronomy as a hobby. Students love "cool" or unusual photos as well and this would be a good one that you could also teach from (zenith, circumpolar constellations, etc.)

There is much to flicker and I will have to think about how I coul use this tool in science. One thought that occurred to me is to upload photos of student work, images of microscopic objects with a chance for students to guess the object, etc. I'm sure there are many other ideas. Serial pictures during dissections is also an idea.

Week 1 Thing 3

On the Advanced Google Search, the menu under usage rights can be selected for "not filtered by license" to find items that are not copyright protected.

As far as teaching students copyright uses. basically any image or files need to be checked for copyrights and/or cited in their projects as references. If in doubt, don't use unless it is original work.

Week 5 Things 12 and 13

Thing 12: Some uses that I found interesting were: ongoing vocab, using a page as a group site with multiple teachers (i.e. for a department), Hall of Fame showcasing student sample work, message board with posts and links to other multimedia/websites. Interesting uses also would include collaborative note-taking (students post responses to an article or question, comment on each others), Literature circle--like an online book club and extra credit assignments buried in the wiki.

I went to the D20 sandbox and added my comment to a page. So this is different than adding a comment because you're directly adding text to a page that is shared by others.

Thing 13: What did you find interesting? What types of applications within schools might work well with Google docs? I shared a document and then edited ones sent to me. Great tool for revising documents among staff. It would work well for students as well when working on a project. It's cool that you can type directly into the file you want to create and it is instantly posted as such. As far as applications, parental access, other staff members, students to access common documents it would be useful for. Instead of creating files, then uploading and providing a link, inviting others to share documents gets them direct access to the documents. I created a survey about class lessons and posted it, then submitted answers and viewed spreadsheet summary. Great tool.

Students and blogging

It's been a kick to see students posting comments on my wiki. Almost like blogging. They like reading each other's comments. So now to turn their online conversations towards more academic purposes--like commenting on each other's opinions on an issue or giving feedback to each other on an assignment. Lots of potential and fun to see how students "talk" to each other electronically while sitting 4 feet away from each other!

How to have members

I posted an article and an accompanying assignment on each of my blogs but I'm a little confused as to how to have members rather than have the blog open to the public. I worked around this by giving instructions to students on how to comment on the blog rather than create a new post. I need to do more research to figure it out--I guess i should read the whole handout on blogs! It will be exciting to use this tool once I make it as user friendly as possible for the students.

Week 1 Thing 1 and 2

Ok so I finally get it. This blog is for me to journal my learning experiences for this web 2.0 course. I have created 3 other blogs, one for each course that I am teaching--biology, enviro sci and anatomy. I am posting news articles of video clips about a relevant topic and having students post a response to a prompt on the story. The posts will count toward a grade on the unit test. I was wondering to myself if studetns can cheat on this type of "e-assignment" but then i will be able to track who is posting what and when I believe. so much to learn...so little time!
I've emailed my URL to nancy.