Google Documents

Today I am working on preparing my class blog as a hub for all the activities I intend for my students to participate in for the upcoming school year. For example, I want to have a running list of vocabulary words that my students can access at any time and search for their own definitions before I begin a lesson. I could certainly post each day's vocabulary words the old fashioned way, by writing them on a dry erase board or taping words to a wall, but the problem I see is that if a student is absent one or more days, I need an easy way for them to find the words they need to get caught up without cluttering my walls and boards with days and days of vocabulary words. So why not use a Google Document?

 I can use Google Documents several different ways. My vocabulary word pages can only be edited by me, but viewed by anyone. I've made it easy for my students to find their vocabulary words by creating a link to that specific Google Document (a spreadsheet, in this case) straight from my class blog. Other documents, such as my classroom's "Jobs in Science" page, will be a class collaborative project, where students can not only access, but can also edit the page as they learn about and think of jobs related to the  material we cover in class.

Ideally, I would change the Sharing settings on each document to be only accessible and editable by my students only. I have the option of setting up each document this way, but in order to do so, I must have the email addresses of each of my students. I have discovered over the past year that due to the use of texting, chatting tools and social networking sites, few of my students actually have email accounts. The easiest way for me to give them access to my class documents is just to open up the editing rights to "everyone," which I suppose gives perfect strangers the ability to participate in my class projects, but this is probably not a likely situation and if it were to happen, isn't that the point of a collaborative project anyway?

Embedding a Google Calendar into Your Blog

I have finally found a way to embed a calendar onto my blog so that my students can see a schedule of assignments and projects for my class! First, you need to have an account with Google, of course. When you login to google, you'll see a "Calendar" link at the top left of the Google homepage and you can add to your calendar from there.

Once you have a calendar started, go to Google Calendar Embedhelper , which will allow you to choose which calendar to want to embed (if you have more than one created) and the Embedhelper will give you an embed code that can be added as an HTML widget on your blog.

The best part is that you don't appear to have to get a whole new embed code every time you make changes to the calendar. They automatically appear on the embedded calendar, which saves a lot of trouble that you have to go through with other widgets that you want to update.

Finally!

Flickr Comments Experiment

Click on this picture to view comments on it and find questions to think about!

Classroom Use of Wikis - An Awards Page

Another use of a classroom wiki that I have come across is using one as an Awards Page or Hall of Fame. This classroom wiki has a Hall of Fame page for wikis and blogs from around the world, but I think you could also set up an awards page for student created projects just within your own classroom. I think is a good idea regarding positive reinforcement in a classroom through the use of technology.

For more ideas about using wikis in the classroom, check out this site: 50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and Interactive Classroom . Some of these ideas are the common ones you hear about in workshops or other websites, but others were new to me and I think there are a lot of good ideas here.

WIkis in the Classroom - Collaborative FAQ

I am slowly warming up to the idea of using a class wiki after seeing a few things I hadn't thought of that might really work in a high school classroom or campus. One wiki I found actually has a couple of things that I liked. One is using a wiki as a collaborative FAQ section that the students can put together for new students in a school or class. This wiki shows how an english class made a student created FAQ section, although the link to that section does not work at the time that I'm writing this. I am still looking for a classroom that is trying this and for now, this will have to do. Not a bad idea, though.

Science Night Announcement

This is just a quick example of how I could use Slideshare.net as a way to announce an upcoming event in my science program. Once I have the date finalized, I will probably embed this on my class webpage.

Sciencenight

View more presentations from Kim.

Using Blogs in the Classroom - Seeing Science in the Real World

This blog is one that I chose, not because it is necessarily made for the classroom, but because I could use it in the classroom. ScienceBlogs is a one stop shop for looking for blogs related to science (which I happen to teach) and I think it could be a really cool way to show kids how science is being used in the real world, by real scientists. These scientists are writing not only for experts in their own fields, which means that their material is much easier for my students to understand without it being watered down very much either. There are lots of new ideas being talked about in this blog and I like the flurry of activity that is happening hhere because it shows just how dynamic and changing the field of science really is. I think that using this blog in my classroom could be an awesome way for me to get kids thinking about science in the news and also see the creative side of science. National Geographic is a partner on this blog as well, so I trust the science included on it, even though some of it is pretty edgy for high school level students.

Using Blogs in the Classroom - Recording a Scientific Process

One way that I have seen a few classrooms use a blog is as way for students to record a scientific process, such as the blog here at I.C. School's Monarch Migration and Projects. This blog includes observations from a class that hatched their own monarch butterfly eggs and the blog allows an easy way for them to include photo documentation of that process. This might be a new way for students to turn in the traditional lab report, especially for projects that take more than a couple of weeks.

Making Timelines Using OurStory

Today's experiment is using OurStory to make a classroom timeline. OurStory lets you upload pictures from your own computer or Yahoo images to illustrate stories that you can write and add to a timeline. In the classroom, this would make a cool place for students to document and review all of the new concepts they are learning in a class over the year and the timeline can be exported to a blog for free, or it can be printed or saved for a price around $15 to $19. The timeline can be viewed by the decade, year, month or day and you can invite friends or family members to add to your timeline, making it a collaborative project.


Start your own timeline at OurStory.com

imageloop - finally!

I have finally had success with a slideshow tool, imageloop. This particular slideshow (you can see it embedded below or in the sidebar on the left) is one that I could use or have a student create to show results from a lab investigation, such as the one we conducted in my biology class. The kids conducted their own fossil dig, and these were the most common fossils. I could use the slideshow as built in flashcards for the kids or a cool way for parents to see what their kids are up to in class.

imageloop lets you import pictures in a way I haven't seen before - you can give it the address to your myspace page, flickr account, website, etc, and it will pull the pictures from it and put them in a slideshow. You can't import audio yet, but the special effects, cool slide transitions and ability to add captions makes this slideshow tool better than a lot I've seen, and different from powerpoint. You can export your product into just about any kind of website, social networking site or blog that you can think of, either as a link or as an embedded widget, like this one (or even as an email).

Something else I noticed on the website, although I didn't have success using it myself, is that you can also make an "officeloop," which let's you upload a powerpoint presentation or pdf file and make a widget out of that. I'm interested in that and will keep trying to make it work. I'm struggling with that particular part of the website and very slow download times and then nothing to show for it. 

Trying Out New Slideshow Tools - The Good, the Bad and... this could get ugly...

My latest experiment with Web 2.0 tools is trying out a couple of free slideshow tools.

My original plan was to try out Joggle, and while the user interface *looks* cool, I would up so incredibly frustrated over trying to use it and get a product that I couldn't make with just any old typical computer program. Joggle lets you import photos and music the most easily and there are options for uploading other documents and maybe even movies, although I had no success with either. The two examples of a Joggle slideshow that I was able to find both had background audio in the form a narrator's voice, but despite all of my efforts, I could not figure out how that was done unless the speaker uses another program to record his voice and then uploads that audio file into Joggle, which would make it fairly impossible to align specific descriptions with specific photos. There also appears to be an extremely limited list of options to personalize any product you make (for example, slide transitions and template styles) and though I stuck with this program to the bitter end, I couldn't figure out how to play my final slideshow. So in this particular showdown, I guess Joggle wins, and I just walk away with high blood pressure and wounded pride.

The good side I am trying to see in Joggle is that it is a place where you could possibly store images online and have access to them from any computer. Although, I should warn you, I couldn't manage to view more than half of my pictures only a few days after I uploaded them. This town just wasn't big enough for the two of us.

Due to getting burned so badly with Joggle, I tried another tool that allows me to do something different than most slideshow tools I've seen, and that's imageloop. The results of which are coming soon to a blog post near you...

My Response to an eSchool News Article

eSchool News published an article last year titled "Survey shows barriers to Web 2.0 in schools" and while the article is already a year old and its reported statistics may have changed, I agree with what it states. I, for example, am trying a lot of Web 2.0 tools in my own classroom this year, and my use of them drives whether or not my school lets those particular tools through our local firewall. However, I am not using many social networking tools in the classroom, partly because I'm not sure what educational purpose they would serve, but also because the term "social networking" automatically brings to mind sites like FaceBook and MySpace which would be remarkably distracting in a classroom setting.

Just this past week at the 2010 TCEA conference, I happened to meet the two owners of a new business that provided a social networking platform designed for the classroom, EduModo. I believe that EduModo is doing what it takes to ensure teachers that this particular website would be safe for classroom use and could separate students' and teachers' personal lives from their professional ones, but I am still not sure about just how educational this tool could be. I am still thinking about this and may give it a try later.

The article lists the top three reasons for why school districts may elect to use Web 2.0 in school and I agree with them, but I also would add one more, and that is that I need any tool I use to be useful in getting the desired scores from my students on our high stakes, state standardized test. This reason alone is sometimes enough for me to rule out a particular Web 2.0 tool or decide to use it.

I totally agree that teachers are beginning to start teaching the way that students think now, and Web 2.0 tools are exactly that. They most often can be personalized to fit and express an individual's style and preferences, can be shared easily, and are instantly gratifying. The question that we are all experimenting with in our minds, I suppose, is: does teaching in this manner truly cause the student to learn more? Or will instant gratification and flashy graphics distract from what the student might not be learning at all?

I don't know the answer to that yet (although I will find out when this year's TAKS test rolls around). But I can't help but think that the move toward making more creative learners and thinkers can't be a bad thing.

My Website's Wordle

This wordle was made from my class blog from last year and I like the way that it gives me a quick idea of the topics or ideas that were discussed often. I am thinking about more ways that I could use this in the classroom other than a summarization tool.

wallwisher in the classroom

Here are a few of my experiments and thoughts on using Wallwisher in the classroom:

1. A few examples of what can be posted.

2. As a place to gather feedback or a place for brainstorming.

3. As a place to quickly collect, compile and access resources.

Pros for using Wallwisher - participants don't have to have a wallwisher or email account, owner can delete notes or require approval before they are posted, is fairly for participants to use, postings are limited to 160 characters and so "spamming" doesn't become a problem

Cons for using Wallwisher - can't delete your own account, can't post files that don't have a URL, can't view a linked website fullscreen, each wall must have its own URL and they are hard to find/google, and hard to remember

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Ideas for Technology in the Classroom

This four minute video helped remind me of all of the different tools I'm acquiring to teach with. Looking at this list of ten tools brings to my mind the fact that although it is really easy to do, as a teacher, I have to be careful not to get into a predictable routine with any of them. I think that a truly engaging class is one that doesn't use the same tools everyday, but uses a healthy and revolving mix of them all...

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First Thoughts on SmartBoards

Today was my first day of teaching with a SmartBoard and Notebook software and I'm impressed with how easy it is to use. I'm not entirely certain I'm using it to its full creative capacity, but that will come with time, I suppose. Today I used it for simple note-taking and note saving, and let kids in another course use it to list what they each knew about a particular ecology topic before and after I taught the lesson. I like the way I can turn each lesson into a PDF file that the kids can download from my class website, too.

Experiment with Podcasting

  
Download now or listen on posterous

chemweather.m4a (3091 KB)

This is my first real podcast. I used it in a chemistry lesson about atmospheric pressure. 

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Using Glogster in the Classroom

Glogster is a new online tool that anyone can use with free registration to make an interactive poster. It is fairly easy to use after a little tinkering around and offers a pretty nice selection of graphics and styles that would appeal to anyone who is interested in scrapbooking and making personalized websites, if you don't mind being limited to a set amount of space to work on. 

 

My first ideas for using Glogster in the classroom started with making a "poster" that was set up to send students on a webquest I had built, or maybe using it to list alternative versions of an assignment or opportunities for extra credit. While I think these ideas are worthwhile, I think that they are not using the creativity that Glogster lend itself to in its fullest capacity. 

 

So then I thought about using this tool as a place for students where students can make an online and interactive poster in place of the traditional poster assignments that generally don't get the student participation that I usually hope for. So I developed my own glog that students can look at to see their assignment, and then each student can make their own Glog to complete the assignment. Some good things I see are that first, the limited workspace becomes a useful control on how much time students put on the assignment versus how much time they spend playing with graphics and font sizes. I was impressed with how easy it was to add a movie from YouTube and add pictures and make them look cool without spending too much time on it. I really like the idea of students being able to make an interactive poster and even grading them could be fun. I'd just have each student complete their glog, and then copy the link to it in a spreadsheet I would have set up in google docs or some place that students could easily paste it into. 

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